Sandier Pastures

More than 24 hours after we left home, Pristine and I finally arrived in Tokyo. What a long journey we had! It was 9 hours from Dubai to Hong Kong, layover for 2 hours mostly spent on running around Hong Kong International Airport, chasing transfer trains, 4 hours of the Hong Kong to Narita (Tokyo) flight and as if it all ended there, we had to take and transfer trains three times before finally arriving in my brother’s apartment.

I had one realization during our Dubai-Hong Kong flight: I HATE long haul economy flights!! It’s not that I’ll be travelling in business or first class from now on but man, it sure is one way of killing me slowly. I sat beside a man with a butt that is 1.5 times the size of the airplane seat, his big arms sticking out taking a great portion of my meager economy space. How can I ever sleep when I’m all curled up like a fan? His snore was louder than the engine noise. The plane took off from Dubai at 12:30 midnight and 4 hours later when the cabin lights are off and people are already dreaming, my eyes were still wide open.

We encountered several turbulence spots in the Hong Kong-Narita route that food service was suspended. Honestly, it was the first time I ever thought if I’d make it alive. All my past experiences with flying were uneventful until this one. I could almost clap my hands when the plane landed in Narita.

lights of Tokyo

So did we fall face down in the bed right after arriving in my brother’s place? No! We spent the next hours talking and catching up and Pristine talking about everrrryyything. We finally slept at 3 am.

Pristine happy to be back in Japan

As for jetlag, it’s interesting to say that I don’t have it when I’m travelling towards the east, along with how the Earth turns. But when it’s the other way around, like when we travelled to Germany from Japan, I had the worst jetlag in my life!

Anyway, just a quick post for today. Will be blogging more as soon as I get some sleep!