Delayed broadcast. And it was going so well.

Flying long haul is a little bit like moving house: you so long between bouts that when you finally do it again, you remember why you swore off it in the first place.

My flight took off from Melbourne two hours late, with the “maintenance issue” fixed. (Being Qantas,  and considering their current climate, I’m guessing the “issue” was their striking workforce.) Settled in to the 30cm cubed space around my seat, and thought, “Well, this isn’t so bad.”

Fast forward ten hours later, totally different tune. The cramps, the cramps, oh my god, the cramps. Well, not so much cramps (that makes me sound like a 70 year old woman), but more a case of ‘I’m  so fucking over sitting in this position’. If you normal people may think that aeroplane seats are uncomfortable, amplify yourself to 6’4 and see how that goes. Sleeping’s out of the question, but you can stretch out in the aisle if you don’t mind being unceremoniously and deliberately bumped by every trolley dolly.

I shouldn’t bitch too much though, because it was mostly agreeable. The biggest redeeming factor with long haul flights these days is the little TV in the back of the seat in front. When I get old, and start genuinely cramping, I’m sure I’ll regale the young folk with tales of days of yore when we all had to watch the one pull down projector screen. Remember that? God it was shit. Today, I had video on demand. The fact you can command them at will doesn’t make them any less shit, mind.

Landed in Japan at about 10pm, and the first thing to strike me was that for a country renowned for its technogical innovations, it sure is naff. Not just a little naff, but undeniably covering every aspect naff. My imagination wanted to step off the plane to be greeted by a Jetsons-style uptopia, but what met me instead was 70’s-style wood paneling and dot matrix printers. I’m not making this up. I haven’t seen one of them in years. Technology museum is not the sort of image Japan conjures up, but in all fairness I didn’t leave the airport’s surrounds.

And, without sounding too generation Y here: they didn’t even have wifi. (Hence the delayed broadcast.)

Internet, or at least some communication, would've been handy - the airline was meant to book me a hotel room for my overnight stop over, but I couldn't find any bugger who knew anything about that, so had to find one myself. Hadn't really factored in Japan to my travels, so getting round was an absolute bitch - and I had no idea how the currency converted. When the dude told me my room was going to be 8,000 yen (by writing it down for me - who's the stupid foreigner now, says Asia), I had no idea if that would bankrupt me or not.

Anyways, it's off to bed for another long haul flight in the morning - will post again soon. Gosh this 'almost like real time blogging but not really' is exciting, isn't it? Just hope some buggers are reading.