Day 01 - Friday 27th July

It was an early start - we wanted to get to the airport at 6pm because the flight left about two hours later at 8:15am.

The taxi arrived a few minutes before the time we booked but I almost got left behind. After we'd put all the bags in the back of the station wagon, I jumped into the back seat and decided there wasn't enough room for my legs behind the driver's seat and so I got out again and went around to get in the other side next to the driver. The driver must have thought that I was safely in the car and so he drove off without me. He didn't get very far because Suzy must have told him that she needed me to come with her too.

We got to the airport by 6am but we need not have worried so much because there was no queue at the Japan Air check-in counter. So we had plenty of time to relax and have breakfast.

The plane left on time and arrived in Tokyo in time. Luckily the plane was less than half full and so we could spread out. Just as well because the economy class seats seemed to be even smaller than usual.

At Narita airport, we'd planned to catch the Airport Limousine to the hotel. This sounds fancy but it's just a normal tourist bus. While we were waiting for the bus, we had some dinner. There's not much choice in the terminal - I settled for McDonald's.

The bus trip to the hotel is mainly on freeways. This part of the trip went well. However, when we got into Tokyo, there traffic was very slow and so the total trip was over 2 hours. The bus dropped us at the front door of our hotel.

The hotel is unusual - it's in a tall office tower. The reception is on level 20 and our room is on level 30 overlooking the railway station, a park and the city.

After settling in, we decided we needed a drink after such a long trip. When we went down to the bar only to be told it was full and we'd have to wait. All was not lost - we found that the hotel shop near reception sold bottles of whisky and vodka at a very reasonable price. So we had a drink back in our room.

There's free WiFi in our room. We managed to get all our equipment connected - our iPhones, my iPad, my new Dell Ultrabook and Suzy's MacBook Air. We had to borrow a couple of power adaptors from reception.

Speaking of advanced technology, I'm looking forward to figuring out the toilet seat - it has five or six buttons next to seat. One is for heating but I'm not sure what the others do.

The iPhone SIMS we bought for this trip don't seem to work very well here. When we tested them, were unable to call each other and so we don't know if other people will have success if they tried to ring us. SMS messages seem to work some of the time but are often delayed. Hopefully, we'll have more success with them when we get to the UK.