Getting to Tokyo- a travel day

You know how days can be defined at the start? I noticed the bottom of my suitcase was ripped from yesterday- not a big one, but enough. Turns out there's no wrapping service here, so tried to tape it up at the airport. I should use that tape that I had on my foot and will try to find it later:)

Then when I got to the airport, turns out my seat on the long haul is broken, so they are moving me to a different seat but I'll only know once I get to Frankfurt as Lufthansa uses their partner ,SAS, here and they can't do anything.

Then I got a free massage trying to get through security- I was sure they were going to strip search me. I was frisked for about 5 minutes- the longest for me ever.

So- these are my three "bad" things for the day and I hope the rest will go well:)

Here is my route from UK to Tokyo

Tomorrow I hope to have a map of all my stops in Japan. An earlier itinerary had one, but now it appears I'll have to recreate it:(

The SAS lounge is chaotic, but good bread in Norway:) bunny was hungry....

Typhoon check: Tokyo is at the Bay at the bottom of the blue line....I learned how to do arrows after this photo, so next will be better.

and Heck of weather at the top of Fuji.... not quite in the forecast yet, but I will be at the base on 19 August and on top 21 August. Looks warmer than I thought, so probably overpacked, but am glad I brought all my rain gear

Bizarre side note: I used vodka last night to get body odour out of my travel shirt without washing (a tip I saw online). This morning the smell was still there, but then used baking soda under my arms and the combination is working- for now....

I was all good news getting out of Oslo - we left 2 minutes early. Here we're leaving oslo:

Breakfast was wonderful eggy potato salad, salmon, and some vegetables. Coffee was helpful and tasted good!

Then disaster struck 30 minutes outside of Frankfurt when we heard a scream come out of economy class....

Crew called for medical personal and The medical guy sitting behind me ran back. Finally another lady two rows back from me went to help. Just before we get to final approach things appear to stabilize and people came back to their seats. Seemed someone had a seizure and you could hear the guy retching as we started final.

That meant we had to wait for medical personal to get on board before we could exit. I was sure I wasn't going to make my connection - especially if

I had passport control and another security check.

Thankfully we got out after about 10 minutes and caught the first bus, so lost almost no time. I was lucky in that only had to go through passport control and no extra security, so was in the lounge in about 20 minutes and had 90 minutes to work out my seat on the long haul. Still champagne was warranted. And which was the better combination: pretzel/banana/champagne, or jellybeans/banana/champagne?

Seems my seat was broken and they were going to assign me a new one and I had requirements, like a free upgrade to first class. This didn't work out, but with Chris "spy in sky" I was able to get a seat next to a broken seat, getting effectively the entire row to myself.

Once on board the steward wasn't pleased as he had promised it to someone else and 2 people were each going to get a row to themselves, but I ruined that plan and my gate supervisor trumped his stewardship.

The flight was fine EXCEPT for children - 2 different families had children who were about 4 years old and randomly would start screaming just as I was kind of getting to sleep. Also, was a bit annoying that I couldn't get the seat totally flat until most of the way through the 13 hour flight. Each time I looked I had another 5 hours still to run.

Dinner was a salmon appetiser and a polenta main - was tasty. Breakfast was savoury pancakes, also pretty good.

Coming down we were lucky to avoid the typhoon, but the clouds were amazing all around us. These pictures don't do it justice. The landing was quite normal apart from we were about 30 minutes and no turbulence prior to langing

Wasn't in a rush after landing,

just as well since I never got a QR code after registering, so had to fill out the paperwork to go through passport control and customs, like in the old days. No big deal since there were plenty of passport and customs agents and it took forever for the luggage. Luckily my suitcase made it without further danger - lived to fly another day.

It was only 11am on the same day I left - now about a 35 hour day as we crossed the date line. I'll split this day into another blog entry. That will wait for tomorrow as have nodded off 4 times finishing this and dropped the phone:)