Narita shrines
The goal of the day was to waste as much time as possible and not get sweaty.
The best way to do this is to spend all day sitting on trains and looking at shrines.
My selection of shrine tourist area was Narita, yes right by the airport, but the wrong airport.
First I wandered around my hotel and had a couple of coffees before showering (again) and checking out at 11am, which was the latest possible time.
Then I spent 2 hours on the train to Narita, which involved a transfer.
The shrine area there is really good, some of the best shrines I have seen in Japan, so it was a worthwhile trip even if I was not just doing it to kill time.
Then I found a food court and that was exciting, but I opted for a bakery instead before going back to my hotel where I had left my bags, before immediately setting off for Haneda airport.
I was still too early.
I am actually typing this at the airport but will split it into two posts as I always do.
Here is Narita station, not the JR station, the other one, Keisei.
They have a dragon out the front of the JR station.
Now for the tourist street. It winds it's way down a hill. The traffic situation was horrendous, cars and trucks nearly running people over.
Trucks come down here!
OK that is enough of the tourist street, lets hit the shrines.
It looks fairly modest to begin with.
Nice light!
Every kind of shrine red ones, brown ones.
This is a different pagoda. There really is a lot to see here.
I hung out with this cat for a while.
A fully red tree! Finally, on my last day.
The lake area of the garden was great but the sun was in the wrong position for photos.
Have a bit more lake.
I exited via the rear of the garden and walked around some quiet streets and got to a huge shopping centre. Time for a late lunch.
A food court! But as I mentioned above, I was too early for dinner, so instead I had a sandwich and a muffin from a bakery. Now to go back to Tokyo, get my bags and continue on to Haneda.
Haneda airport
Haneda airports main web page has a warning about congestion at immigration, you see this page when you log onto the wifi.
When you are in line they play an announcement 'the immigration area is very chaotic right now please...'.
This truly is one of the worst airports in the world now, if I see it on a best airports list I will know those lists are getting paid to make recommendations.
It took me more than an hour to get through security and immigration, probably an hour and 15 minutes. This is unacceptable.
If you have a shop in the airport departures, where there are a lot of restaurants before immigration and almost none after, please understand that the refusal of the archaic Japanese government / airport authority to open more counters / lanes results in you losing business. Everyone has to immediately find the guy holding the giant pole with the big sign on the top saying END OF THE LINE HERE even if it is 3 hours until departure because the line is intimidatingly long.
I saved a good rant for the end.
So after hanging out in an unnecessary line for a while, I had time to eat the same dinner I have eaten before from one of only about 3 tiny restaurants post immigration, and then type and upload this in a hurried fashion and soon it will be time to board.
I do not have a huge amount of time in Cairns on the way back, so maybe there will be photos of Cairns airport, maybe not, either way they will be almost as fascinating as hotel room photos.
Qantas is going well, cancelled and delayed flights. I am not flying Qantas. There were angry people hanging around the sign though.
This terminal of Haneda airport is not massive, so I do not understand the poor service of security and immigration.
And an exact same meal I have had before at this airport, Yakisoba. Great it was too, and under $10.
OK I had better go find my gate now.
Tokyo to Cairns on a Virgin 737
Now I am in Cairns, Australia. I have flown here on a tiny 737 death plane and made it.
I wont be able to do that again either as Virgin is no longer selling the Cairns to Tokyo flight, next time I will have to use Singapore airlines again or maybe ANA who are now the Virgin partner in Japan.
The flight was fine, I had a row to myself, but they turn the lights off too late and turn them back on again a full 2 hours before landing. That is a strange thing to do as there is no breakfast on offer.
Arriving in Cairns also has some advantages, my plane was tiny, I was at the front, and there were no other international flights arriving before mine, so I was first through customs, no lines at all unlike Japan, but then the fun started.
I still have to fly back to Melbourne (which is a 4 hour flight) but I had 2 hours to kill in Cairns. It was surprisingly not swelteringly hot outside so I walked around the airport for a while. I stopped at one point and took the photo below, through a fence, in a public area in the main car park. Next thing 2 federal police land cruisers come screaming around the corner, sirens blazing, skid to a halt and leap out and tell me to put my bag on the ground and step away from it.
They went through my whole bag and made me show them the photos I had taken... lots of hiking photos, pictures of ramen.
I showed them I still had Japanese yen in my wallet as I had just arrived from Japan. The best bit was 'how long have you been unemployed for?'. Strange assumption. I did ask what was going on and if this was a training drill, to which I was told to say nothing unless spoken to. So they take my license and go to their car for 5 minutes and come back and tell me to go, but to not take any more photos in the airport. So there you go, apparently taking photos in the airport car park is now illegal.
So on that exciting note, holiday over.
Here is the photo I took through the car park fence that caused the feds to have a panic attack. Good work guys, you got me.
And since one photo is not enough, here is the inside of the Cairns airport, I made the observation last time that it has a lot more shops and eating places than you would expect for such a small airport. I probably won't come back through Cairns again unless it is for work as it seems unlikely flights to where I want to go would ever connect through Cairns, it was a real rarity due to Virgin operating long haul flights with a tiny plane.
As always, a terrible boring photo as the last photo.
The end.
There are currently 1 comments - click to add
Adriana on 2024-11-22 said:
You didn't take many photos today