Day 1 01.09.2013 (Reading/Heathrow)
My journey began on the 1st September, I had both my bags and it was off to the wonderful land of... Hounslow... I couldn't wait. I dragged my bags into town to catch the train. Depart Reading, change at Hayes & Harlington, arrive at Terminal 4. As I walked onto the train a guy (I assumed foreign) asked me which train was arrived at Maidenhead - that happened to be the one I was getting on so I told him to sit next to me and I'd let him know when to get off. We talked about travelling and various things. Once he left/as the train was passing through Slough it got really busy and was very uncomfortable. But eventually I arrived at Terminal 4, and after getting a little lost as to where to get off of the elevator I got outside. Know I had a vague idea of which bus to get but it was around half an hour. The bus arrived, I hoped on... But unfortunately it didn't drop me off where I thought it would. I ended up getting off over a mile from a hotel and walking the long distance. Luckily the path was wide so it wasn't difficult to manoeuvre my bag (as it would have been with the thin paths of a city centre).
I checked into my hotel and now needed to work out the correct both to catch in the morning to get to Terminal 4, as there was no way I was walking a mile to the bus stop. It took around an hour to work out where the bus stop was as it was unmarked so confirmation involved waiting for the bus to turn up (and it only ran once an hour)! I picked up some chicken and chips from a shop called Rocky's but it was disgusted and I vowed never to get chicken from anywhere but my usual haunt (Chicken Base).
Then I attempted to study some Japanese but was too excited so I set my 3 alarm clocks and went to bed early. Annoyingly my room had a smoke alarm directly above the head which was constantly flashing so getting to sleep involved having my head under the duvet which made it extremely uncomfortable as it was very warm.Day 2 02.09.2013 (Heathrow/Above various countries)
So I woke up stupidly early, 5AM, and my flight was at 11:45AM but I was extremely excited due to the fact that I hadn't overslept and missed my flight (I had been having anxiety attacks over missing the flight - I was fine about going to a foreign country where I couldn't speak much of the language, but missing the flight was way more worried). I got showered and dressed, eat some croissants I had bought at Tesco yesterday and caught the bus to Terminal 4 at 6:30AM. While waiting for the bus I sparked up conversation with a man from America. He turned out to be a lawyer and we talked about Franklin & Bash (an unrealistic law comedy TV show), public transport in UK and US and how had an insanely long flight (22 hours if I remember correctly).
The bus pulled up at Terminal 4, and I had to wait 2 hours to check in... A very boring period ensued as there are no shops before you check in at Terminal 4. So I just sat in various places and people watched.
Eventually I got to check-in and was really looking forward to having a McDonald's breakfast (I had been craving a McMuffin for years but had never arrived at a McDonald's early enough to have one). Sadly, there was no McDonald's in Terminal 4...
I had a connecting flight: London -> Amsterdam -> Narita. In between the first flight arriving at Amsterdam and the second flight leaving Amsterdam there was a gap of 40 minutes - this posed two problems which I will get to in a second...
The first was that they was an absolute twat who had no idea what he was doing and ended up making the flight leave around 35 minutes late. So you can imagine my worry thinking I was going to miss my flight. I was nearly in fucking tears. All this planning yet my holiday was going to be ruined by some idiot (I'm still of the opinion he should be pushed off a cliff).
On the flight, I talked to someone who was also heading to Japan to climb Mt. Fuji so we talked a lot and he reassured me I wasn't going to miss my flight. He over rushed across Schiphol Airport to make sure to got to the gate okay (his connecting flight was three hours). Much respect to him! Luckily the flight landed earlier in Amsterdam, so I was in a massive run across Schiphol Airport (huge airport, had to cover over 1km...) But I made the flight!
Cue an 11+ hour flight with no sleep.... I tried to sleep but it didn't happen. At least I managed to watch The Internship which I've wanted to watch for a while now!
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