On our way to the airport

We got up nice and early at 8am, none of us with any sleep. My brother had been up chatting with his friends, I had been helping him download some anime, Mum had been mending her fleece jacket, and Dad had been doing god knows what. A pretty standard evening in our family, all things considered.

Now, back to the morning. For the first time in my life I had actually packed all my bags beforehand, so I got to just sit around whilst my brother and mum were running around finding things they had forgotten to pack, trying to figure out what those last few missing items were. Honestly it was a very refreshing experience to have done everything the day before, and I can highly recommend it. Knowing myself this might be the one and only time it happens though…

Packing done, we were just on our way out the door when we found out that there might have been an accident on the train tracks, causing delayed trains and potentially cancelling them. Not great news for us, but we never did find out if there had actually been one, as the warning just sort of disappeared, and our train thankfully ended up just being a bit late. In the end we even made it to the airport with more time to spare than we had planned for initially!

The first flight

Next stop; boarding our first flight

The view from the train to Kastrup airport

Once we arrived at the airport we went to check in our bags, and immediately ran into more problems. We were all checking in luggage (much to dad’s dismay), but as we filled in our information at the self service station and waited for it to start printing our luggage tags, it just… didn’t. Instead we were met with this lovely error:

technology doing what technology is wont to do

our bags going down the conveyor Thus we ended up having to find a non self service station, queue for what felt like half an hour, and then finally get our luggage sent on it’s merry way, my dad being ever so slightly vindicated. The service personnel was very nice though, so it really wasn’t that bad in the end.

Thankfully the rest of our experience at Kastrup was more par for the course. Our plane was 20 minutes late (of course) and I spent the time trying to download even more anime my brother had requested, failing miserably (why can’t Ipads install torrent software, like come on apple; let me download my Linux ISOs in peace D: ). Then before we knew it we were about to board towards Helsinki (unfortunately without additional anime however).

As soon as we boarded we were welcomed by a voice recording from Father Christmas himself, welcoming us to his airline and wishing us merry holidays (it was a really sweet announcement actually, and it was both in Finnish and in English). We then had a nice and uneventful flight which pretty much everyone in the family just slept through.

Our plane to Helsinki

Helsinki

the desert was amazing As I said before our plane was about 20 minutes late, which cut into our time in the lounge at Helsinki, but boy was the lounge worth it. We rushed to the food court, where we had two main dishes to choose from at the buffet, as well as freshly made foccacia! The food was so good I totally forgot to take pictures of it, and only remembered for the desert, which was amazing as well of course!

It was also here in the lounge we found our first public toilet with a bidet. Guess there are more places than Japan that have fancy toilets, huh. The lounge was very luxurious overall to be honest. There were Christmas trees everywhere, and there was even a cute little sled diorama set up in the lobby area.

very merry vibes here indeed

On our way to the next plane I ran into this cool exhibition that I believe is supposed to show you what it looked like at different places in Finland. It was set to an area up north with Northern lights playing all over and it was very pretty, but I didn’t quite have time to stay and have a proper look or read more about it unfortunately.

I want to see them in their full glory in real life one day…

We also ran past a little Moomin shop, which was very inviting and cute. That was sort of the general vibe I got of the entire place to be honest. There’s just something about Finland which is so calm and sweet. It feels like everything can sort of take the time it needs to. I don’t know why, but I feel that way with the Finish language too. It’s so pretty. The flow is really soothing and nice. I just can’t put my finger on what it is, but I love it.

very inviting

The second flight

We timed our arrival to the gate perfectly; they had already begun boarding, and it was just about our turn. I got a minor heart attack when my boarding pass refused to scan, but it turns out I had just managed to get it swapped by mistake and had tried scanning the one from my last flight. Make sure to keep your boarding cards in check guys!

our ticket to the land of the rising sun With that little mishap figured out we finally all piled into the big metal tube that was to be our residence for the next 13 or so hours. The Christmas spirit was in full swing here as well, with several members of the crew having red Santa hats. Unfortunately the merry atmosphere did nothing to get us off the ground on time, and the plane ended up running late. We ended up just sitting in the aeroplane for a full hour before takeoff (even the pilot was quick to voice his dismay over the intercom as he was told to taxi all across the airport and then back again). This isn’t to say that the time was uneventful however. As we were boarding you could see large amounts of snow on top of the airport, and that had to be washed off before we took to the skies. It was a very strange procedure, but very cool. There were a a group of trucks all spraying some glycol (I assume at least) on the plane to melt away all the snow! It was certainly an experience to hear it all raining down on the cabin.

snow washing

Then finally we had liftoff! Food was served quite early on, and you could choose between meatballs or chicken katsu. Since we flew from Finland to Japan I would wager that they have one meal from the country you fly from and one from the country you fly to, which would be neat, but I’m not actually sure. There was soda included for free (a service I made abysmal use out of, but I’m pretty sure that it was “infinite”), and you could also get a small alcoholic beverage. Personally I chose the chicken katsu, and a can of Finnish beer.

Honestly quite good overall.

Now comes the big question; what does one do on a 13 hour flight? I had thankfully come prepared, and was working on both making some finishing changes to the code behind this blog, as well as writing all of the content for today. I played some video games as well (I’ve been waiting to play an RPG in my steam library for ages, aaaaand, it’s incredibly mid tier. Hopefully the story will pick up the pace in a while). I also watched some anime with my little brother (the late night downloads paying off). We shared earbuds for a few episodes of Dandadan, and honestly it’s an amazing show, albeit with a very peculiar premise. One of my roommates recommended it to me before I left, and I can really see why. I can wholeheartedly send that recommendation onwards. Go watch it, it’s great. Of course I also spent some time sleeping as well, or rather trying to sleep. I didn’t have a lot of space, having the middle seat and all, so I didn’t manage to get hours of sleep or anything, but at any amount of rest is good! We were going to go to bed quite soon after we land anyways.

Another fun thing with the flight are the in flight entertainment systems. I’ve never been on a plane this big in my adult life, so I’m not very used to it, but they are pretty cool. They come with both music and movies (I sort of half watched Deadpool X Wolverine without subtitles over my brother’s shoulder whilst typing), as well as a whole slew of systems to keep track of where the plane is (you can even have a look through cameras mounted on the outside)! The one big downside with these systems, at least for us plebs in economy, is that they are mounted on the back of the chair in front of you, and they don’t pivot at all. This means that when the person in front of you decides to lie down, your screen suddenly moves a decimetre downwards, giving you a sore neck and a horrible viewing experience. I get that it’s a cost saving measure, but is it really that expensive to just put in some nice hinges? (note, I was specifically asked by my brother to complain about this xD)

Towards the end of the flight, during a brief pause from her napping, Mum turned over and announcef she has figured out The Thing We Forgot™ (there’s always one thing on every single journey), and thankfully it was just that both me and her had forgotten to pack our bathing suits. Something easily solved at a store once we arrive. Just a few hours before arriving we had our breakfast; potatoes, egg, spinach and baked beans. It was also quite good. I don’t quite get the flak aeroplane food gets.

Airplane breakfast. There are beans under there I promise Then finally, after 13 hours of mostly sitting still (my butt was hurting even though I have been conditioned with long sessions of playing videogames), we had arrived. As we were looking around and picking together our stuff I suddenly realised I was missing the blanket we had been given. I searched for a good while, especially when they asked us all to put our blankets on the seats so they could be collected, cleaned and reused, but I never did find it. I believe that mum stole it from me without me noticing, but I guess I’ll never know…

Our schedule for the flight, Finnish time on top (+2), Japanese on the bottom (+8)

We’re not going to be here quite that long xD

Then finally comes the time to land. Since we didn’t fly over Russia we had to do a 180 degree turn to approach, which went swimmingly, and we could soon see Japan through our window and the plane cameras. As we got really close to the ground I was worried we might miss the runway for a second, as we had very little altitude but were still some way from the landing strip, but those fears were quickly dismissed as our pilot did a few extra “burns” to get us to land just right (the plane was not quite at the right angle, it was pivoted ever so slightly to the left but I assume that was on purpose).

Then it was off to immigration. The queues were long, but went by quickly. I was trying to get myself an eSim card so I could use mobile data. I got a text message from my Swedish provider saying that I’d used some from my normal plan, even though mobile data was turned off, which caused me to just turn off the sim altogether. I kind of needed some way of communicating with the family if there wasn’t WiFi around. Unfortunately my connection to the airport WiFi was really shoddy, and I didn’t quite manage. Whilst I was fighting with that mum was trying to to communicate with our taxi driver who had been waiting for us a while already. Our plane had landed about an hour late, and although I think he planned around that he still must’ve waited a while for us to go through. The first part of immigration was no problem. We all got our fingerprints taken and our faces scanned, but the second part was a way more involved process.

welcome sign at the airport

We had to go one by one and hand over a little slip of paper with information about our stay, where we where staying, a Japanese number to call that place, the tracking number of our aeroplane, so many things. Then the woman at the counter checked the security features of the passport, and I mean really checked. She scanned all the seals, checked the paper, made sure the foil was correct. It took ages, but it was all accepted, and I was the first in our family to be welcomed into Japan (except for dad who’s been here before, but details.)

Then we ran off to pick up our bags, walk through customs without declaring anything, and finally we could get to the taxi who was waiting. Whilst we’d been waiting in the queue he sent us images with a step by step tutorial of how to find him, and they really came in handy as we rushed through the airport. We all piled in, thanked him so much for waiting, and sped away towards Tokyo city, and our hotel in Shinjuku. Just ten or so minutes into the ride we passed a random Hellcat going in the same direction, and I also saw my very first real life Kei-truck! My brother and I briefly tried connecting to the WiFi of an airport bus we were tailing for a solid while, but they required a password, so no luck there. Having not had a lot of sleep on the flight I soon found myself drifting off, and when I woke up, we were in the heart of Tokyo!

This page was very long, so I decided to split it into two parts. The one of actually getting to Japan (this one), as well as a second one about what we actually did on our first night. I’m currently writing that second one, so It’s not available quite yet. I just figured It would be better if I managed to get something up on the internet at least instead (once I finally got the website to work with me)

Today’s Japanese phrases:

• Sumimasen, Nihongo ga wakarimasen - (Sorry I don’t speak japanese)
• … doko desu ka - (where is …)