The Fiji Airways flight to Tokyo went well. It was only when we were underway that the pilot announced that this was the first Fiji Airways flight from Nadi to Tokyo since the Covid 19 lockdown. We were all given a small gift, a spray and a cream moisturiser, to mark the special occasion! The meals on the Fiji flights have been tasty, but also very small. We had been planning that after we arrived at our hotel in Tokyo we'd go out for a proper dinner. However, that wasn't to be.
The flight landed near on time in Tokyo, at 7:40pm local time (10:40pm Fiji/NZ time). Things then turned to custard. There was an excruciating 3 hour queue through quarantine and immigration, shuffling along at an abysmal rate, with young children getting more and more overtired and irritable. It was a big ask. The really frustrating thing was that there were 30 counters at immigration, but only 10 were manned. It was only after we'd been shuffling for 2 hours that they finally opened up another 10 counters and that made a big difference. There were literally thousands of people queuing and everyone was very tired and frustrated by the obvious inefficiency of the processing system. Our bags had all been dumped off the conveyor belts, which had closed by the time we got to them around midnight. We were just very happy to see both bags had arrived. We had Tile trackers on them, so already knew that they had reached Tokyo.
Well and truly stymied, extremely tired, and with no Plan A let alone B or C, the only option was to head back into the terminal building to find somewhere to sleep for a few hours. The trains would be running again from 5:30am. The small seating area set aside for waiting was full but fortuitously John spied a nice carpeted hallway leading to some meeting rooms. We figured there weren't likely to be many meetings between 1am and 5am, so we locked our packs together and lay down to try and get a few hours kip. It wasn't quite the bright and exciting return to Tokyo that we'd been anticipating but we were too desperate to care by this stage. The carpet made a huge difference, both softer and warmer than the tiled floors elsewhere. We got several hours of sleep, while others clearly just walked or sat the entire night.
I was awake before 5am so we gathered ourselves up and headed underground to buy some train tickets. Irrespective of the machines saying they took credit cards, they didn't. Backtrack to an ATM, extract cash, then back to have another go getting tickets. Yes! Onto the train for the 50min ride into town, and it was great to finally emerge into the city. It was fun to walk the 10 minutes to our hotel, taking in the late cherry blossoms all around us, the quirky little restaurants, all the uniformed men waving flags at pedestrian crossings and other things typically Japanese. Fronting up at the hotel reception to claim yesterday's booked accommodation, we were able to dump our bags into our allocated room, jump into bed (not as exciting as it might sound) at 7:30am to get another couple of hours of much needed sleep. We crashed very successfully but were keen to get out and about before 10am.
What a first day! We thought our days of sleeping on the floor at airport terminals were over, but clearly not. It was an adventure all the same. If we can make up some sleep we should bounce back.
