This is just going to be short post just to round off the trip. Don't get all excited - not a lot happened. Let's face it, there's a limit to the entertainment possibilites provided by getting up early and going to an airport...

Up at completely bloody stupid o'clock (around 4:30am) just to make sure we didn't oversleep, miss our plane and have to live in Japan forever, sleeping under a bridge and earning money by perhaps becoming some sort of novelty streetperformers. We have no discernable talents so...best not.

Said goodbye to our final hotel room on this trip at about 5:15am, checked out and kept our fingers crossed that there was a taxi in our future. Since the whole conversation with Fujimoto San the day before yesterday had been in Japanese, we might have ordered a freshly culled badger. But no, no problem; actually even though we were early the taxi driver was already waiting for us in the lobby downstairs. Phenomenal! 

A couple of minutes later we were speeding towards Haneda International Terminal (we were not screwing that up this year!) in the back of a taxi and, in my case, trying to have a conversation in (mainly) Japanese with the driver. And in Tracey's case, firmly not having any conversation at all, it's my golden hour, don't anybody of any nationality even talk to me. It was quite a good conversation though and at one point included a discussion on the dangers of driving in Italy.

No I can't remember how we got to that - it was very early.

I do know though, that due to the general amount of banging on about random stuff going on, our driver missed the turning to the International Terminal! Suddenly it went from quite relaxed to "ohsweetjesusnotagain!". However, very unlike last time it wasn't that much of an issue since we were still stupidly early and, after profuse apologies, he drove in a big loop for 5 minutes, got back to the junction again and it was all good. 

So we were at Haneda by 6am.

For a 9:30am flight. 

Even allowing for an entertaining ten minutes while I returned the Pocket Wi-Fi, got slightly lost on the way back to where Tracey was waiting with the cases and ended up returning via the Taxi Rank again like a really crap magic act, we still had a long long wait for our flight. Long. And boring. At 6am there's really not a hell of a lot to do before the security checks at Haneda. Still, at least we were there in time. So...there's that. 

To be fair though, check-in opened exactly when JAL said it would and once we got through security we could at least get breakfast with our remaining Yen. 

Then the usual sitting around in the depature lounge, boarding, sorting out seats etc etc. No two-up for us this time so one poor guy was sandwiched next to the window - he was asleep for most of the journey though. B.A. on behalf of JAL still feels like the short end of the stick but the food was a bit better than last time and the service was noticably friendlier. Still no Sake on board though - WHY B.A., WHY!?

And so, many hours later we were back in Blighty, facing the same old drag across London on the noisey Tube (with several "Chantelles" giving it large on their phones at top volume) and then back up to Witham and home.

And we didn't have to tell any porkies to the Taxi Driver this time. :-) 

The End.

Until next time.

Don't worry.

There will be a next time...