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Japan Post 3: Wrapup

Thursday we had another very busy day at the Embassy and the workshop ran overtime. In the evening we all headed out to dinner at another restaurant serving more 'normal' food. I had a hot and sour soup and a Beef Laab Salad for main. Very nice. After dinner we headed back to the hotel for drinks in the bar.

Friday morning I got up early and began to pack, then headed down for breakfast. The breakfasts have been very good and I had a choice of three restaurants at the hotel to eat at. Each day I took the safe option and went Western. Normal high quality hotel buffet breakfast, but with one glaring omission - mushrooms! Oh well. After breakfast I said farewell to the other workshop participants and then finished packing. I also arranged a late checkout (2pm) since we were going out shopping all day. Around 10 I met up with my colleague and we went to Shimbashi in search of the 100 Yen shop, but after an hour of hunting, we had no luck. Back on the sub to Asakawa for a wandering round the market stalls and a few other bits and pieces...and we found a 100 Yen shop there instead and bought a few things.

Once back at the hotel we checked out and waited for the bus which was due to collect us at 3.50. The trip to the airport was fairly smooth sailing and seemed to take far less time than on the way in. We had several hours to kill at the airport so I wandered around the shops and managed to get into an Internet cafe to do a few things there as well as in the Qantas Club (shared with JAL Executive Lounge).

The flight left on time at 8.00pm Friday and I had a seat on the upper deck. Qantas doesn't use it's Skybeds on it's routes to Japan so the seats were normal. Business class is fine if someone else is picking up the tab, but it's a huge con on the whole. Sure, it's better than cattle class, but not hugely better in my opinion. We arrived in Sydney at 7.30am Sat to be met with an SMS from Qantas explaining our Sydney Canberra flight had been delayed from 9.15am to 9.45am. After clearing customs and going through the International transfer I managed to get onto an earlier flight at 8.45, which was a huge relief - nothing worse than having to hang around the airport for ages waiting for a short flight. I got back home around 10.30 just in time for MJ's birthday party.