Mick insisted that for this holiday he would only fly Business Class.

His last trip to Japan in February with our son on Business Class tickets had made it impossible to fly Economy any longer – or so he said.

And, it was a wonderful first leg of our trip.

Once we were checked in, we were given our boarding passes and a card that indicated that we could pass through security via the Express Lane. And, once we were through (and it was quick), we made our way to the Qantas Lounge for breakfast and a very comfortable wait until boarding.

When we boarded we were served a glass of champagne, and even though it was early, it felt right. I was not aware that the seats had a massage feature until Mick pointed it out. The cabin crew was extremely nice to us, but I did not like the fact that there was a barrier between me and Mick. It was very difficult to chat during the flight, so we each watched our movies, and after our meal, the cabin was plunged into darkness and almost everyone seemed to rest or were fast asleep. I was determined not to succumb, even after we were each given a pair of pyjamas, as the time difference in Tokyo is only one hour behind Brisbane’s time, and I wanted to make sure that I slept well on our first night.

Our flight took just over 9 hours and we flew pretty much north from Brisbane.

We landed in Narita Airport, which we knew was quite a distance from central Tokyo, but our taxi was there waiting for us. The only hiccup was trying to get my e-sim to work, however our Chinese-born taxi driver was able to help me. The trick – shut the phone down and turn it back on again after activating the sim.

The trip to our hotel in Shinjuku took 90 minutes and by the time we checked in we were both pretty tired and needed to rest up as tomorrow we have the first of our full-day excursions booked.

We chose to stay in this area as it is easy to get around the city from here. Or so they say.

Shinjuku Station is the world’s busiest railway station, handling more than two million passengers every day, and it is from here that we are to start our tour. How easy will it be to find our tour with 2 million people? We will find out I guess tomorrow.

I had read that September is the wettest month, and we will not be disappointed. Tomorrow’s forecast is predicting 40mm!! Blimey.