It was Monday. Nothing good about Monday's according to Garfield, and I tend to agree. This was to be the day we headed for home. But I got a fantastic sleep. Didn't wake up until about 8.30, so I must have needed it and with an overnight flight with broken sleep planned, I would need all the sleep I could get. After grabbing a quick but rather unsatisfying breakfast from Cafe Pronto, we headed back to the room to get packed and ready to go. It had been nice staying at the Smile Hotel. We were left to our own devices, the rooms were bigger than the Center and were adequately furnished (though free wifi in the rooms would be one improvement) but ultimately, it's not the same as home, where you have your own room and are free to dance around in your underwear should you choose.
I always plan on travelling light, but by the end, it never ends up that way. To counteract my clothing purchases, I put as much of the clothes I had brought over in space bags and put them in the black suitcase. We borrowed a small, asmathic handheld vacuum from the maids, and sucked the big bag flatter, but had to make do with sitting on the smaller bags to let the air out. We got it all in though, and after putting our bottles of booze in our snowboard boots (keeps them protected very well) and sorting our snowboard bag out, we got everything sorted. Unfortunately, we wouldn't be able to Takkyubin our bags from the hotel to the airport. With the bags now weighing probably an extra 10kgs from when we arrived, we weren't looking forward to lugging them the 1 or 2 kilometres back to Tokyo station. Everyone wanted the easiest option, so it was to send Mum and Whitney in one taxi with all of their luggage, one of us (ended up being me) in another taxi with our black suitcase and all the backpacks while the other 2 lugged the snowboard bags the distance back to the station. I had an driver called Nishimura (I read the kanji of his name correctly - Yay!), but not wanting the old guy to hurt himself, I did all the lugging of the bags in and out of the boot and backseat.
It would still be another 10mins or so before the other 2 reached us, so I quickly popped downstairs to mail back Yoshi's spare mobile phone and wifi router (which hadn't worked for us, but it was probably a proxy setting we couldn't touch). After coming back up, it was only a couple of minutes before we saw Dean's little cap heading down the street. Once inside the station, we got our N'EX (Narita Express) tickets sorted first, before worrying about anything else. It was about 11.45, but to give ourselves enough time, we reserved our seats on the 1.03 train. This gave us enough time to go to the loo and buy some cakes. There was a crepe place, and I had fully intended on grabbing a crepe, but when we got there, it was either closing down, or moving everything out for refurbishment. What is it with my luck of crepe luck? It's crepe Ray.
I had to settle with stuff from Daimaru instead, so after grabbing a couple of bits of karaage chicken, I went to the confectionary level and decided on a Strawberry shortcake and Creme Caramel (something I don't think I've eaten that much of this time, but Mum does it best anyway) before heading back to the others, who had already gotten theirs. We now had about 30mins before the train left, so we headed for platform. This was one reason why I'm glad we Takkyubin'd the bags everywhere else. A 166cm, 32kg board bag is an unwieldy thing, and trying to to get it up and down escalators, into and out of lifts and on and off trains whilst trying not hit anyone is a mission.
We waited on the station platform (which is below ground 5 levels) for about 15mins, before one short train arrived. There was an american businessman who didn't know if this was the correct train, but once I explained it was only half of it, he said "That's stupid". I then explained that the Narita express can be taken in 2 different directions. One goes to Shinjuku and Ikebukuro (when coming from the airport), while the other goes to Yokohama and Odawara in the south. He didn't have anything to reply to this other than "Oh", especially as the next train arrived soon after and was joined in about 10secs.
After hopping on and getting ourselves sorted, we sat down to enjoy the journey. It was only after we got out of the underground tunnel and into the open air that I received any mobile signal. All of a sudden I had 2 messages, one from the Brisbane Council warning of bad weather for the SE, while the other one was from Jetstar. "Your flight has been cancelled" were the sum total of the words. I showed Dean, then Mum and Whitney, absolutely floored. If I had signal I would have received it at 12.54, nearly 10 mins before we boarded the train, but it wouldn't have done much good anyway, we still needed to go to the airport to get things sorted.
Once we got there, we tried getting information, but as it was only 2pm and the flight not leaving until 8.10 none of the Jetstar counters were open. The Narita staff didn't know much about the situation, so other than wait, there was not much we could do. At least we had some wifi to let people know. So after sending a couple of emails, I went upstairs to find the crepe place that I had seen 2 years ago. I must have angered someone, because the crepe place was not there. I searched high and low, but turned up nothing. I even asked a girl at another information desk, but nope, no crepe places. Damn it! I miss out on crepes again (I did have one in Harajuku though, so it's better than none at all). There were shops to buy souvenirs and restaurants around, but with limited funds, and having eaten my cake and creme caramel on the train, I wasn't really in need of food. I headed back towards where Dean and Conrad were, before passing out for about an hour. I must have just hit comatose when Mum shook me saying the others had gone to get something to eat. It was about 5.15pm now, so I didn't mind eating, so headed upstairs to find them. I did a couple of laps before finding the restaurant they were in and had just sat down to eat when I get a ring. I haven't really had any phone calls whilst over here and have avoided sending messages so my next bill isn't astronomical, but when your flight has been cancelled and a +613xxxxxxxx number calls you, you have to answer. There was a foreign lady on the phone and I had hoped that I wasn't being telemarketed overseas, because I wouldn't have found it funny, but fortunately it was a lady from Jetstar.
We had a brief conversation. She was informing me the flight had been cancelled (already knew that...) and apologising for the inconvenience. That's all very well and good, but a) how am I going to get home, and b) what was going to be done in the meantime. She said that they could stick us on the flight back to Cairns tomorrow night (the Gold Coast flight on Monday was fully booked apparently), so we had to take what we could get. Then I asked about accommodation. I can sleep anywhere, but the others wouldn't take too kindly to sleeping in the airport. She said that it was Jetstar's policy (in the small print) that they can cancel flights at anytime. So basically we were up the creek. Dean and I (after finishing eating) then spent the next half an hour running around trying to call reverse charges to our travel insurance company (which we supposed to call reverse charge before making a claim). Every number we tried either didn't work or we got some guy from KDDI saying he was unable to collect call that number... Great... In the end, Dean ended up using my phone to call them directly, and they advised that it would be $100 excess per policy if a claim had to be made, but said we were better off checking with the airline first. So we did. We trekked to the end of the check-in terminal (the Jetstar gates are A and B, while we were seated between E and H) to see a line up forming. It was for the Gold Coast flight, but there was a lady holding a Cairns sign and told us to join another line. Fortunately it didn't take too long (efficient airport staff) before we were told that we were being put up for the night, with dinner and breakfast included. By this time I had started getting an ulcer on the inside of my lip, so it was a bit of welcome relief.
After booking us in for the flight the following night, they gave us our marching orders, so we headed for the bus where a guy was holding up a sign for our hotel. We boarded the bus before we spent 5 mins or so driving to the hotel. It looked huge, especially in comparison to all the other hotels we had stayed at this trip. After getting inside, we were checked in and given our dinner and breakfast coupons. We hauled our gear up to the rooms (Dean and I were in a twin, Mum and Whitney in another, while Conrad got a single to himself), before meeting up again. We had only eaten an hour or so before at the airport, so we didn't feel like eating just yet (wouldn't have spent that money if we had known), so we headed to the top floor to the "Sky Lounge". It was a pretty swanky place, with dim lighting, jazz music playing, nice decor and a view of all the lights of the airport precinct. Dean and I grabbed a stress relieving beer, while Mum grabbed a Campari, bitters and soda for something to suit the location. We sat around letting the drinks soothe our frazzled nerves before we decided to head downstairs for dinner. It was a buffet... Not the best quality buffet I've ever had, but pretty good and for free, I wasn't complaining... just eating. I was stuffed to the gills, before Mum said that she wanted to get more money out. Fortunately there was a 7-11 just next door. She grabbed some money and drinks, which we shared, before we had to pass out from exhaustion.
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