Starting a journey

Today is the day, all that planning done (at least the planning I am willing to do in advance) and my things packed I set off to the airport at 8a.m yesterday.

The first flight took 40min from Linz to Vienna, from where my flight to Narita started.
At 1:15p.m was the take-off from Vienna. I made some notes during the 11 hour flight, which I will now reproduce:

Lunch was served with 9h15min to go above Minsk: Curry. A lesson I learned: If you have to choose between a new white shirt and a new orange shirt, wear the orange one if you eat curry. The white one won't stay that color, trust me.
Nap after lunch, woke up above Moscow.

Me after seven hours of flight

Seven hours to go, just woke up again. We crossed the Ural Mountains by then. Read a bit and watched a bit of a in-flight-movie. The selection was not bad and surprisingly up-to-date.

4,5 hours to go, above Irkutsk, it's dark outside. A snack was served: Instant ramen.
Ohropax and sleeping mask provided at least some sleep. Near-constant baby cries are hard to block off.

1,5h hours to go, slept surprisingly well, breakfast was served above Seoul.

Reached the airspace above Japan with 45min to go.

First glimpse of Japan

Stats of the aircraft I witnessed:
Speed: Between 900 and 1200+km/h
Height: Between 10000 and 12000m
40 rows, nine seats each, divided into sections of three.

I got a window seat during this flight, which has advantages and disadvantages.
+: View out of the window, this gets old after some time of just clouds however.
-: If the passengers next to you sleep, it's not easy to reach the toilett.
-: Getting your stuff from the overhead storage is hard.

We reached Narita at about 8a.m. and proceeded to check-out. Which took some time.
I got my Traveller's Cheques and my Japan Rail pass, held my first conversations in Japanese and traveled to Kyoto. More on this later.

So long and stay tuned,
JuergenS

written by

JuergenS on July 4, 2010 from Vienna, Austria

from the travel blog: Two month of Japan

tagged Flight and Arrival

Send a Compliment

1. nice sleeping mask
2. cool! a mega aeroplane!
3. who could assume, that austrians are not able to eat curry without wasting their surroundings (incl. clothing)? (My tip: don't play with your food any Battle games!)

written by Babuschka on July 6, 2010

To 3: Nah, that's just me ^^

written by

JuergenS on July 8, 2010

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