Day 01 - Canberra to Nagasaki

Today's Journey.

Welcome to the Plekker's 2018 Japan Holiday Blog. Given last year's adventures in Japan, with so many amazing highlights and one not so special lowlight, we've decided to do a resubmit and try and make this year's Japan holiday broken back-free.

The day kicked off at around 1500h with Jen driving us from home and kindly delivering us to Canberra Airport. We almost died just up the end of our street, but that's a whole other story. When we got to the Airport, there were so many tears, but Kyle's eyes soon dried up after we consoled him, and Jen had left, and he caught a shiny Magicarp. 

Bye Jen, we'll miss you...and your family.

The obligatory start-of-holiday selfie.

Our overnight flying adventures would take us from Canberra to Sydney, to Tokyo and then onto Nagasaki.

Our aircraft arrives at Canberra Airport.

Our first flight took us to Sydney onboard Virgin Australia’s flight VA661 an ATR72-600. After leaving on time, the flight took approximately an hour which saw us arriving at around 1700h at the Domestic Terminal. We quickly caught the bus across to the International Terminal taking in the exciting aviation activities on the tarmac before settling in for some duty free shopping and Maccas.

Traipsing across the tarmac at Canberra Airport.

Ready to board.

Arriving into Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport from the North always provides spectacular views of Sydney Harbour.

Traipsing across the tarmac at Sydney Airport.

Nice views during the bus trip to the International Terminal as a Qatar Airlines Airbus A380 arrives.

Up close and personal with a Qantas Boeing 747-400ER.

The next leg from Sydney to Tokyo was with ANA, flight NH880 on a beautiful Boeing 787-9. 

Our Aircraft is ready for boarding.

The flight departed around 2200h and arrived in Tokyo at around 0445h, or around 20 minutes ahead of schedule. In terms of it being an overnight flight, it was pretty uncomfortable and not just because we were flying Cattle Class, it just seemed so unbearably hot and dry in the cabin, and there are no personal ventilation outlets for the passengers to manipulate. We all watched a movie or two, or in Sky's case, four. 

On arrival at a very rainy Tokyo Haneda Airport, clearing Immigration, Baggage and Customs were all very smooth, though we had a ten minute wait to catch the bus across to Terminal 2. There was also slight hiccup with the baggage tags not registering on the computers, but they were quickly retagged. We had 90 minutes before our next flight and we made it comfortably.

It seems that I am not the only one susceptible to slips in Japan.

Waiting at Terminal 2 for our next flight.

The final leg of our journey to Nagasaki was flight NH3731 (JO807X), operated by Solaseed Air, a subsidiary of ANA. They fly nothing else but Boeing 737-800s, and the experience was actually quite nice. 

Ready to push back and head off to Nagasaki.

Enroute.

Enroute, continued.

The distance between Tokyo and Nagasaki (in a straight line) is close to 1000km, so the flight took a couple of hours.

Arriving at Nagasaki Airport.

We arrived in Nagasaki at a little after 0900h (local), very tired, but glad to have arrived safely.

Here at last...someone looks tired.

Whew...that's the end of Day one.