As I sit here typing this, I’m freezing my boobies off, wearing my last clean pair of socks, watching some dramatic Japanese movie involving a lot of shouting and gold teeth. I can’t believe my trip is almost over already- we leave here Tuesday and head back to Perth Wednesday. I’ve pretty much forgotten everything that has happened up until an hour ago, so I’ll think back as I type and start from the start.
Day 1 – Sunday/Monday
Pre-flight.
Best flying shoes ever, BTW. Peter Alexander slippers!
Our Plane’s here!
After close to 7 hours on the plane from Perth to Kuala Lumpur, I was pretty over being in the upright position, but unfortunately as soon as we hopped off the plane, we had to rush straight through to the next gate for another 7 hours to Japan. Obviously, we made time to enjoy the travelators of the KL airport as much as possible- doing our best moonwalks and Terminator impersonations (“Have you seen this boy?” *Begin walking at warp speed*).
The second flight was pretty tedious. Although I usually love flying, I sleep even less on planes than I do in my bed (and that’s fuck all sleep!), and as our flight went right through the night, it was pretty much slipping in and out of an uncomfortable slumber. However, it was nice to wake up to some 4am hot curry for breakfast. I’m such a huge fan of non-breakfast breakfasts…and also breakfast-dinners. I often have cereal, or an omelette, or bacon and eggs for dinner. And I pretty much love plane food in general. I’m not sure why people complain about it. Being as picky as I am it’s so cool to have all my food in little separate compartments, little cups of juice and water, a nicely wrapped bread roll and butter pat. Nom. Not to mention airplane tea. I have a thing for airplane tea. It’s so flipping great. Powdered creamer and little sugar sachets, it’s the best. And now after typing this, I’m pretty excited for the flight home.
On the train from the airport, we were talking about how fascinating it is that it’s so normal here for people to sleep, anywhere, anytime, regardless of what’s going on around them. Everyone hops on the train, settles comfortably into their heated train seat (Best, BTW), and slowly lets their head slip forward into they fall into unconsciousness. I fit in pretty well, as I was falling asleep the whole trip, husband telling me I did the occasional head-jerk-up “HUH?”…*and back to sleep.* People sleep everywhere. They leave their cars running on the side of the street and just nap with their feet up. We saw a guy lying precariously on his motorbike, snoozing in the snow.
And that of course, gets me to the snow. We arrived at our hotel- the best named hotel in the world- Hotel NUTS. Standing for New Urban Time and Space..so Japanese. The old lady at reception was fairly hilarious and made lots of grunts and moans while carrying our luggage- which she insisted on having no help in doing. We bailed from the hotel for a while to wait for them to get our rooms ready. We went to Sega Joypolis, a big and awesome multi-floor arcade/indoor theme park to kill some time as we had been there before when we were last here and knew where it was. We didn’t stay long, but made sure to have our first Crepes of the trip. I have missed the Crepes SO much since the last time we visited. The crappy excuses around Perth do not even come close to comparing. Banana, melty choc-chips and Cream in a hot Crepe wrapped up in a cone-shape = heaven.
When we stepped outside onto the wooden decks, I kind of stared at the sky for a minute…we both just silently did little double-takes and yelled, “Wha..IT’S SNOWING!” We have walked in snow before- but never seen fresh snow falling, and definitely didn’t expect to see it on this trip. When we came previously a couple of years back on our honeymoon to Tokyo & Paris- we came at the beginning of January and just missed snow season in both places. We were bummed about it, and didn’t think of it again while planning this trip. It was only after we were all arranged we realised we should’ve come earlier and caught a little snow- so you can imagine our excitement when we stepped outside.
We also stopped for my Starbucks Hot Chocolate fix (we have NO Starbucks in Perth, it’s the first thing I get whenever we leave the country) to warm ourselves up, and use the bathroom, just for fun. It’s common here for toilets to have heated seats, auto flush, auto sinks- some toilets play music and some play nature noises, or running river sounds- some you can choose the sounds yourself. Some flush after you leave but have a button for a “flush noise”- simply to make you feel better if you feel uncomfortable walking away from a toilet and leaving it unflushed.
I also tried this, McDonald’s Potato & Bacon Pie. Can somebody tell me why in God’s Good Graces do we not have these in Perth? TRAVESTY!
On the way back to the hotel we watched some crazy American tourists have hardcore snowball fights, slipping all over the place and falling down and belting each other with ice. Once we got back to the hotel we were happy to find our room had a huge deep bath that easily fit us both so we could thaw out nicely.
We snuggled up in bed with hotel-tea (second best to airplane tea) and drifted off to sleep looking forward to the next day.
Much more to come…
<3 & Cupcakes, Em.
