I am going to Tokyo for the weekend.
Actually for 4 days and 3 nights with overnight flights to get there and back again either side.
The reasons for my quick visit are top secret, keep an eye on new bulletins sometime Sunday.
Because I am leaving late Thursday and back again on Tuesday morning, I am going straight from my Sydney office to the airport.
This requires some careful planning and coordination, not least of which is to hack the work firewall to allow FTP uploads of what I am typing right now.
One challenge I have set myself for the 4 days, no photos of food. Too many people complained I just take boring food photos, so instead I will describe food textually in great detail and you get no photos. A picture is worth a thousand words, prepare yourself.
A rare photo indeed. Its me, at my desk, at work, pretending to work (not such a rare site for those that work here).
The view out of the office window. Its dissapointing, rather uninspiring sea front and small cheap looking boats.
The view out the other window has the Sydney harbour bridge and yet more boats. Seems to be quite a few fires threatening the city right now hence the smoky photo. Probably best I leave for earthquakes and radiation to escape imminent threat of bushfire.
I hung out at work not working for as long as I could but still managed to get to the airport many hours early.
The lady at the first class check in area which is actually a closed off little lounge appeared to be asleep. I decided to stand there really quietly and glare at her.
After what seemed like 2 minutes she saw me out of the corner of her half closed eyes and woke with a shock, telling me shes been waiting for an hour for a customer.
Surprisingly theres only one Qantas flight that leaves Sydney in the evening, the one I am on to Narita, so the Qantas check in area and lounge was all but abandoned.
In the lounge I had dinner, and it was great, pork belly with some lemon oil thing and extra greens. It came with rice too which I did not eat. The pork belly had some shaved chilli on it and was cooked superbly. The best meal I have had yet in the lounge, no pictures though!
Tomorrow I will actually have things to say about Tokyo probably, but it wont be until late as I cant check in to my hotel until 4pm Australian time. Until then I will be wandering around like a zombie terrifying Japanese salary men with my unshaven face and hair which after 10 hours on a plane with 0% humidity will render me looking like Yahoo Serious. Long sentence is long.
The view out the window at dusk. Uninspiring perhaps, unless you like planes. Even then theres not much interesting to see.
The great benefits of being a platinum frequent flyer, you can use the restaurant, day spa and showers. I enjoyed my 30 minute shower a lot.
If you hate cleaning your bathroom at home spare a thought for the ladies whos job it is to fully clean every room after each person uses it. They must do it 50 times a day each.
Theres a first time for everything, I thought. I sat down in front of an apple computer. Having never used one before. Except it was running Windows 7. I hate the keyboard too, and the scroll thing on the mouse was useless. I took out my laptop instead.
This is my plane. An ageing 747 which is probably the one that half blew up near Manila a couple of years ago. Apparently Qantas is so poor now that they have to cease operations as an international airline and let Dubai run it for them. It will be hugely annoying in the future to have to fly to Dubai first to go to Tokyo. Even more so when they cease operations as a domestic carrier too and outsource that to Emirates, Adelaide to Sydney via Dubai every Monday.