After breakfast I finished packing up the tripod bag with the toiletries, and also had to wait for a bit doing nothing while Moccle had a shower. We had breakfast, waited for about quarter of an hour, and then went to check out of the hotel about 4.45am.
We went to Onarimon Station and got the first train, which was the 5.06 to Otemachi. There was about 2 people waiting at Onarimon station at that time, and when the train arrived it did have a few people on it, but far from the standing room only that is typical of trains in Tokyo.
At Otemachi we changed to the Tokyo Metro and went to Nishi-Funabashi. Surprisingly, the train was now getting quite filled up seat wise. Moccle had said yesterday how it was weird that in Tokyo they didn't seem to have women-only (train) cars, unlike in some of the other places we visited in Japan, especially considering how packed the trains in Tokyo get. Well the car we got today was actually a 'women only' car (though not before 7am when we were on it). SO it seems they do have some women only cars, just only on certain lines I guess, and I didn't see any 'women-only' queuing points on the platforms like we've seen in other parts of Japan.
At Nishi-Funabashi, we needed to change to the JR Soba line so we could get to Narita International airport.
However, when we got off the train at Nishi-Funabashi, our tickets wouldn't go through the transfer ticket gates to get into the JR lines area of the station. We couldn't see any ticket machines in the Tokyo Metro area of the station, which is where we were, so we had to exit through a different set of ticket gates, buy our JR tickets, and could then go through some JR ticket gates to get to the JR line we needed.
However, when trying to purchase our JR line tickets, we couldn't see Narita International Airport on the ticket prices board. According to the info we had seen previously, the JR ticket to Narita International Airport was about 3000 yen. The highest price on the board was something like 1650 yen, so I thought the approx 3000 yen price we had seen before must have been the price the tickets for both of us. So we bought the most expensive ticket, and went into the JR line area of the station. However, while there was about 6 platforms for the Sobu line, all of them said 'local', and it didn't seem as if any of them went to Narita International Airport, unlike what the Tokyo guide map indicated.
Moccle asked the security guard bloke at the JR ticket gates, and he said that we needed to change at Funabashi. This would explain why we couldn't see Narita International Airport on the ticket prices board. We went down to platform one, which was what the security guard bloke said we needed. Unfortunately we just missed the train, so had to wait about 9 minutes for the next one.
We got the next train to Funabashi when it arrived, but then at Funabashi we just missed a train as we got down onto the platform (though we didn't see where it was going, so I can't say it was the train for Narita International Airport that we missed). We had to wait 20 minutes for the next train to Narita International Airport, which arrived at 6.36am, not giving us much time to get to Narita International Airport, as our flight was leaving at 9am, and you're meant to check-in about 2 hours before departure.
We still managed to get a seat on the train, but as it went along it did get quite filled up, and there were quite a few school children using the trains, despite it still being so early. On the way to the airport we also saw some actual countryside, everywhere else we'd been so far in Japan there had been lots of houses or Industrial buildings.
Despite being a 'rapid' train, the train seemed quite slow, and by 7.30am we still hadn't reached Narita International Airport. With the process of trying to find the check-in point, waiting 45 minutes in a long queue to check-in, going through security, and then walking all the way to the boarding gate, we were thinking that we would miss our flight.
I was also thinking that we should have got the train in the evening and then spent the early hours of the morning either at the airport or around a nearby train station that has regular trains to the airport, which is what I'd wanted to do, but Moccle hadn't wanted to do that, and had wanted to stay in the hotel overnight and get the first train in the morning (which is what we did).
When the train finally arrived at Narita International Airport, it was about 7.45am, so we thought we must be too late. I put my ticket in the Fare adjustment machine, since I thought the tickets to Narita International Airport were meant to be about 3000 yen each, but it just spat it out again, and we were able to get through the ticket gates okay with our tickets. So it seems that the 3000 yen tickets must actually have been for a different train service to Narita International Airport.
We rushed towards the departure place anyway. Unfortunately there were signs saying 'North Departures' and 'South Departures' (or something similar), and going in separate directions. There was a board with departures listed on it and what departure place you needed to go to, but all the flights listed were in the evening. It had one Asiana flight on it, and that was in the South Departure place. So I started up the escalator to the South Departures place, and Moccle followed me, but then asked why I was going to the South Departures place since we didn't know where we needed to go.
I said why I was going that way, but then Moccle said that the board with the flights on was actually rotating through the flights, so if we'd stayed there, we could have seen the correct Departure place we needed. I said that in that case we should go back down and look at the screen, but Moccle said we should carry on to the South Departure place, so we did.
We had to go up a few flights of escalators, and there was a bloke in front of us, so we couldn't run up them to be quicker. When we got to the South Departures place we saw an Asiana check in desk, but Moccle noticed that the first four lots of check desks (A,B,C,D) were first class and business class. We walked (fast) up to the start of the economy class or whatever it was called, and saw there was a big screen with a list of the flights and what check-in desk you needed to go to.
Thankfully, our flight was still listed, It listed A,B,C,D as the check-in desks places for our flight. So we went to one on D I think it was, which said it was business class. The lady there told us that we needed to go to check in desk E. So the board had the wrong information on it, typical!
We went to check in desk E, and amazingly we weren't too late for our flight and got checked in okay about 8am. The closing time for the boarding gate printed on our tickets was 8.30am (half an hour before take-off), so we were still cutting it quite short.
We went through security, which involved first showing passport and boarding pass to someone. Then you'd go through to a separate area and get your passport checked, and the bloke would take off the Japan customs bit of paper that they stapled in the passport when you arrived in Japan.
After that you had to go through to the next security area, bag up all your liquids, remove your laptop from you bag, and place your coat, contents of your pockets, and everything else in a tray(s) so they could be x-rayed. Unlike Heathrow, you didn't need to take off your belt or shoes. You had to walk through a metal detector arch, then you could pick up all your stuff. You could also see the x-rays on the monitors from the other side.
We rushed towards our boarding gate, and were actually making quite good time. Our gate was just round the corner, and it was only about 8.10am when Moccle saw a shop selling Studio Ghibli toys. We had a quick look, but Moccle decided not to buy anything, then we went to the departure lounge round the corner for our flight. To our surprise, there were lots of people sitting there waiting, and the flights (it was 2 gates with 2 flights to Seoul, both at 9am), weren't even boarding yet.
I looked at my ticket, and realised that actually 8.30am was the boarding time, not the time the boarding gates closed (I'm pretty sure that on the flight from Heathrow to Seoul they said that the boarding gate closed half an our before take-off, which in this case would have been 8.30am). So since we had a bit of extra time we went back to the shop that had some Studio Ghibli Merchandise. It only had a couple of shelves worth of Studio Ghibli stuff, mainly stuffed Totoros, but also a few Kiki's delivery service cats and Ponyos.
Since Moccle had been annoyed that he didn't get a Studio Ghibli thing when we were at the Ghibli museum, and also we didn't have any other use for our yen, I said he might as well buying something, even though it was expensive. He bought a Ponyo puppet that was 2600 yen, and also a bottle of Pocari Sweat, which was like 140 yen or something. We went back to the departure lounge and I had a bit of my Korean travel sickness medicine, then shortly after the flight started boarding.
Weirdly, despite us being so late to the airport, we had got a window seat, although the window seat was actually allocated to Moccle, I sat there, and enjoyed the view over Japan, we even got to see Mount Fuji! You could see that the tops of some of the mountains were brown/red (Autumn colours), while most of the rest of the mountains were green. In the valleys was grey with all the houses. Unfortunately, taking photos through the window didn't work too well, and the photos tended to come extremely low contrast, almost just a sold grey colour. Still, at least the view through my eyes was good.
About 10am, they served us some food, which we weren't expecting, given that the flight was only 2 hours long and didn't span a traditional meal time slot. Still, it seemed everyone else was grateful for the meal, and we were too as we were starting to get a bit hungry.
I would guess the flight was 1/3 over Japan, 1/3 over the sea, then 1/3 over Korea. Korea was very mountainous, just like Japan, but in the valleys it was a red-brown colour rather than grey. You could see that the red-brown coloured valleys were actually full of fields. Some parts of Japan seemed to be a lot of fields, but they still seemed to be a more grey/green colour, certainly not the bright brown red of the Korean fields anyway.
When we were getting near the airport in Korea you started to see a lot more grey, with blocks of skyscrapers huddled together in groups. We landed okay, got off the plane, and then followed the signs to 'transfers'.
When we got to the transfers bit, you had to have all your stuff x-rayed again, despite it already having been x-rayed before the flight you came in on. Maybe the Koreans just don't trust other countries to do their x-raying properly. One of the security blokes there told Moccle that he couldn't bring the bottle of Pocari Sweat on board with him. ANNOYING!!!! We only got the bottle of Pocari Sweat to be a souvenir of our trip to Korea and Japan, and so everyone back home could have a taste of it.
What I thought was most annoying about this was not that you couldn't bring the bottle on the flight with you (though that was extremely annoying), but that in Japan there wasn't any notification that you wouldn't be able to take any liquids you bought there on a flight that you transfer to in another country. We were glad that we hadn't bought something like an expensive bottle of Sake though.
Moccle drank the Pocari Sweat while I put all my stuff through the x-ray machine. Moccle actually wanted me to drink half of the Pocari Sweat, but by the time he'd said that I'd already started putting my things in an x-ray tray.
After getting my stuff scanned and myself metal detector scanned by hand, as I set off the metal detector gate (actually everyone who went through the metal detector gate set it off and had to be hand scanned, rendering it pretty pointless), I had to wait for Moccle to finishing drinking the Pocari Sweat, go to the back of the queue, and then wait his turn for x-raying and metal detectoring.
We then went on to the departure shopping area. We walked from where we entered the shopping area, all the way down to the other end of the shopping area, then back, and down to where our gate was. After a bit, we found the same shops repeated. I guess they didn't expect anyone to walk all the way from one end of the shopping area to the other. We also found that all the shops were posh shops, like Armani, Bvlgari, Gucci etc. (I can't remember if those were the actual shops, but the shops were of that sort).
A couple of shops sold cameras and lenses, priced in USD. I don't quite know what the normal selling price of the cameras and lenses they were selling was, but I guess it was about the normal US price (e.g. a D300s was something like $2100), so it would be cheaper than buying from the UK. But unless you are dishonest, you would have to pay VAT when you got to the UK, and also you wouldn't have any UK warranty.
Walking down to our departure gate, there was a small structure with a woman playing a string instrument thing in it and some people watching. We couldn't go straight over and see what it was as we were on one of those moving walkway things, so when that came to an end we went back to see what it was. We just caught the end of her performance, then her, a guy playing a kind of reed instrument, a guy playing a fat flute, and a drummer played a song, which was very good. Moccle said it was the song that they always play in the Pansori film Gyeongbeokgong (or sumat like that).
After that was a performance by a bloke dancing around with a fan. When he was done, a lady told us that the next performance was at 2pm, which was after our flight was due to leave. Moccle picked up a leaflet from outside the exhibit, and it seems it was to advertise 'Korea House', a place 'to inform the public about traditional Korean culture'. Bit strange to have it in the departures area then, where only people leaving Korea will see it.
We went to sit down in the waiting area for our departure gate, and Moccle suggested I check the laptop to see if there was free wi-fi. Amazingly there was, so Moccle checked his facebook and youtube account quickly, and then I finished writing yesterday's blog post. As soon as I started doing that the flight started boarding.
We got on the flight, but had been allocated middle aisle seats, with me of the left of the aisle, Moccle on the right, and someone else in between us. Strange how we could get window seats for the flight from Japan to Korea, even though we only checked in an hour before takeoff, yet we got middle aisle seats on the Korea to London flight which we were checked in for a good few hours in advance (they checked us in to both flights in Japan).
Moccle sat next to me anyway, and we did at least get TV screens in the back of the seats in front of us. We looked through the Asiana Entertainment magazine, which details what films etc. are available on the in flight TV thing. It had a section titled 'View finder' at the top of the page and 'Shorts' on the side of the page, that offered some decent looking programs like 'Human Wrecking Ball: Cinema Smack Down', which had a description of
The Pumphrey Brothers break things with their bare hands. In this episode they destroy a giant movie screenUnfortunately, when we tried to find the Shorts or Viewfinder section on the in flight entertainment menu, it didn't exist. I checked all the different options, and it didn't have it or any of the shorts.
Looking further into the magazine, we saw that actually most of the stuff was probably available only for Business or first class customers.
The flight started off, and no-one had sat next to Moccle or complained that he was sitting in their seat. Looking round, we saw quite a few other people had spare seats next to them. One guy even had a window seat with two spare seats next to him, that he later used as a bed to lie down on.
On the in flight entertainment I went on a couple of games, both of which had been made by an Indian company, One was a super breakout clone, but the screen was too rubbish to see how big your paddle thing was. The other was one of the jigsaw puzzle style games where you have a picture cut into 9 blocks with one block missing, and then the rest muddled up, and you have to try and recreate the picture but only by moving blocks into the space next to them
When the flight had gotten going, the air stewardesses handed out the pack with slippers, eye mask, toothbrush, and toothpaste, and also some headphones so you could listen to in the in-flight entertainment. I first tried watching Goemon, I chose English language for the sound option, but it was actually in Japanese with Korean subtitles.
Next I tried 'Chaw', which was in Korean with English subtitles. Unfortunately the film was quite dark, and the screen was so rubbish and reflecty, you couldn't see what was happening. After that I tried a Chinese film, 'Alls well, Ends well', which was in Chinese (though seemed to be dubbed, probably from Cantonese I would guess), with Korean subtitles. It was nice and bright so you could see it okay, but the screen is still a rubbish way to watch a film. The sound through the headphones wasn't that good either, as you couldn't hear it when the people were whispering to each other.
After a bit they started serving food (even though it was only like 4pm or sumat), so I took my headphones off, and my screen went black. I can't really say whether the film was good or not, not having watched much of it, and not being able to understand what the people were saying (the plot seemed to involve a woman wanting a husband, and a bloke who can hypnotise people / make people fall in love). Like most Chinese comedy films that I've seen though, it seemed to have good production values but not actually very funny / not a very good plot.
When I'd finished eating my food, I got the laptop out and wrote this blog post so far.
After that I tried to go to sleep for a bit, and probably succeeded a bit as well.
Then we were served another meal, so I ate that, then tried to go to sleep a bit more. After a while it was getting near landing time (though probably still half an hour before), so I stopped trying to go to sleep and changed my watch back to English time and also changed the alarm on it from 3am, which is was set to to wake us up this morning.
After a bit the plane landed, though about 45 minutes late, which they said was due to traffic congestion at Incheon International Airport (where we had taken off from in Korea). We got off the plane and walked to the passport checking area. There was a queue for the EU passports check-in, but I saw another very short queue that said 'UK and Ireland passports'. So I went down that way, but when I gave the bloke my passport, he asked me where I was going, it turned out that the short queue was for flight transfers only.
So we joined the end of the long queue for EU passports, they just did a quick check of the passport, and then we could go through to the baggage reclaim area. There were a few baggage carousels, but I didn't see any boards showing which baggage reclaim station had the baggage from which flight. Moccle spotted one further into the Baggage reclaim area, so he went and looked at that while I went to the outsized baggage reclaim station to pick up my tripod, since when we had left Heathrow they had said the tripod would have to go in outsized baggage, I presumed it would be in that on the way back into Heathrow as well.
However, I was wrong and the baggage reclaim station for outsized luggage was empty. I looked around to try and find Moccle, and after a bit I found him, and he had got my tripod as it was on the normal baggage carousel for our flight, which he had found. He hadn't got his bag yet though, so we had to wait quite a while until it came round on the carousel.
We then exited the baggage reclaim area, there were two ways out we could use - one that said something like 'EU and UK citizens' and the other said something like 'EU and UK citizens - Nothing to declare'. We took the 'Nothing to declare' root, but the only difference between the two routes was that the 'Nothing to declare' root went through a room with some trolleys or something in it, while the other route just went round the outside of the room.
We followed the signs for the London Underground, and bought a ticket there to Kings Cross St. Pancras, which was listed on the machine as just plain 'Kings Cross'. It cost £4 each, but the route was quite far. Luckily the whole journey is on the Piccadilly line, so there wasn't any need to change trains, and the train wasn't too busy either so we could both get a seat. Unlike the trains in Seoul and Tokyo, the train was quite narrow, so putting your luggage by your feet made it difficult for people to get past, and it also didn't have a luggage rack above your head either.
The train left probably about 7.20pm, and took about an hour to get to Kings Cross St Pancras. When we got to Kings Cross St Pancras, we followed the signs for Pancras International Station. When we got there, there was a board with the trains departing listed on it, and the one we wanted to Nottingham was departing at that moment (about 8.30pm), so we'd just missed it.
So we had to wait around for about an hour until the 21.25 train to Nottingham. Moccle tried to phone McRad to tell him, but his phone couldn't phone or send any messages for some cheesun.
Eventually the train arrived, so we got on the train, and headed off towards Market Harborough, which was the first stop. But on train, we had our tickets checked, and were told that they weren't valid as they were only valid on the train at the time we had booked them for. Looking at the tickets, I could see that they did they were only valid for that specific time, but annoying that it didn't seem to say anything about this on the East Midlands Trains website when we booked the tickets (well, actually Moccle booked the tickets, so I didn't see the website, but he would have known they were only for a specific time if it had said so on the website).
So we had to pay an extra £37 each, on top of the £14 we'd already paid, making it £51 for a single from London to Market Harborough. I thought this must have been the standard ticket price, as I know when I looked at train tickets from Market Harborough to London before they were stupidly expensive, but Moccle thought they must have charged us double for not having a valid ticket. In that case it would make it quite annoying for the ticket gates to let us through with an invalid ticket just so we can be charged double the normal ticket price on the train.
The train took just over an hour to get to Market Harborough. When we got off the phone Moccle tried his phone again and it was now working, so Clare came to pick us up. When we got home I unpacked a bit of my stuff and then finished writing this blog post. I went to bed at about 00:20.
Food
Breakfast: ½ Rasin pain delicieux; ½ choc chip and choc striped pain delicieux; cup of black coffee (we'd run out of the milk packet things).
Lunch: Soba noodles with noodle sauce and wasabi; Beef and vegetables in sauce stuff; rice; bread roll with weird butter stuff that looked like cream. For pudding was a delicious caramel flavoured cream thing. Cup of green tea; cup of sprite.
Dinner: Beef stuff; Rice; Various leaves; Weird thing that was like egg and seaweed; Weird piece of fruit stuff that had a mushy texture when you chewed it; Bean sauce; Kimchi. There was also some mushroom soup that I didn't have any of and some bits of chilli pepper that I only had a tiny bit of (too hot). For pudding was some weird fruit that tasted okay, but just okay. Black coffee (I thought I had some coffee whitener on my food tray, but actually I didn't); cup of white wine.
Breakfast (or was it dinner again?): Battered chicken pieces in sauce with various vegetables; rice; Tofu; soy sauce; bread roll with butter; Fruit salad; Coffee; Cup of orange and grapefruit juice (tasted like that anyway).
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