Welcome to our 2019 Japan Holiday Blog, I hope you enjoy sharing our adventures. This year it's just Maureen, Schuyler (Sky) and I. At the time we headed off on our holiday, Kyle was in Vietnam and Joshua had just returned from two weeks in Japan with Stephanie.
Our journey started at home in Canberra from where we headed off in the car to Sydney. We left around around mid-morning, stopping briefly at McDonalds in Gungahlin (not far from home) to say goodbye to Joshua and to get some breakfast. Our drive to Sydney was pretty uneventful, traffic was mild (except near the M5 Tunnel where we moved at snail's pace) the whole journey took us around two-and-a-half hours. We deliberately left very early to ensure that we would get to the airport on time and to mitigate any unforeseen delays, like M5 Tunnel traffic jams.
When we arrived in Sydney we headed directly to the seaside suburb of Brighton le Sands, not far from the airport for a tradition that we haven’t done for some time. Fish-and-Chips by the beach, watching aircraft. The Beach is actually called Commonwealth Beach and is one of Sydney Airport’s best aircraft viewing location. Even stopping for lunch, we still had plenty of time up our sleeves, so we hung around here for an hour or more watching aeroplanes and Seagulls. Here's a few photos taken from the beach...
After gorging ourselves on Fish, Chips and Calamari, we headed straight for the International Airport Departures drop off point, where I dropped off Maureen and Sky, and our luggage. I then continued on to Randwick Barracks (around seven kilometres away) as I had pre-arranged long-term parking there.
I caught an Uber ride back to Sydney International Airport with Eugene as my driver, meeting back up with Maureen and Sky who were waiting patiently. Check-in for the flight was around 1830h, so we still had an hour to kill. An hour later we checked in our (now light) luggage. we then cleared Immigration and Security without any major fuss, though Schuyler managed to draw the short straw on the Bomb Sniff Test. After clearing security screening, we were straight into the Duty Free shopping area. Maureen and Sky made a bee-line for the alcohol...I think they might have a problem. Duty Free shopping was followed by a light dinner, before heading to departure gate 56 and heading out to our aircraft, an All-Nippon Airways (ANA) Boeing 787-9 (registration number JA894-A). Our flight, NH880 bound for Tokyo departed on time at 2130h.
Our flight departed south from Sydney Airport, before making a giant U-turn, taking us northwards inland from the East Coast of Australia. The route saw us overfly Papua New Guinea and over the Pacific Ocean (far east of the Philippines). In the early part of the night I watched the recently released movie 'Ad Astra' staring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland, and was not overly impressed. Maureen watched 'Hobbs and Shaw' (I think it's actually Fast and Furious 235) while Sky watched three movies and a live Soccer match. The general consensus was that the in-flight meal was pretty good. A negative point I find when flying the Boeing 787 is that there are no individual ventilation (or air conditioning) controls, and the flight over always seems to be too hot inside.
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