Life After the US

Hi everyone!

I arrived in Tokyo safe and sound tonight at 7pm :)hehe, the first proper blog post after the us, so I feel bit odd :O

anyways, there was a bit of drama getting out of Australia this morning.

Like universe was telling me not to go.

Pat, Ellie and Charlotte came to see me off in the airport this morning, which was very sweet of them, especially considering girls went out the night after/the same morning and had a few hours of sleep. hehe ellie had a bit of accident on the way as well, which was pretty funny.

My flights were at 7:30am to Gold Coast and at 10:50am to Narita.

Saying good bye to them was really sad :( but i got to the plane in Melbourne about 5 min to spare. girls were really eager to go to the gate while Pat and I just could not care less about getting there on time.

Alright, first accident (or sign, i must say) happened in the flight to Gold Coast.

The captain announced that the weather in Gold Coast had deteriorated severely that planes had to have extra fuel than they were usually required. That meant that the plane could not land in Gold Coast with the current amount of fuel that it had, so we had to land in Brisbane... It landed in Brisbane at 8:35am(QLD time), which actually was 5 min later than the time it was supposed to get to Gold Coast. The fill up took about 30min and they had to do extra taxing or whatever which took extra 15min. So by the time We left Gold Coast it was 9:15am.
I was shitting myself then because I had a flight to catch and you know going through the custom and what not takes a looooong time. There was also an announcement saying that the flight to Narita will be delayed if necessary to wait for us. Phew. The weather in Brisbane was horrible. So i was getting worried about how much Gold Coast was supposed to be. When landing, the whole plane shuttered and it was bit crazy.

It only took the plane 14min to travel the distance of Brisbane and Gold Coast. So I landed in Gold Coast at 9:45am (hang on, i lost 15min somewhere... ah well). I had 1hr to pick up my luggages and check-in again and go thorough the custom/immigration. Turns out that the weather in Gold Coast was much better than the one in Brisbane... 1.5hr just wasted for nothing. Thanks jetstar!

When I was checking in, I asked a girl at the Jetstar counter how many passengers that we've got in the plane. I was expecting to stretch up and sleep for the entire trip.

and she said...

"The plane is really full. We have 273 passengers"

(Dane, you were the closest)

Whaatt?! I couldnt believe it! everyone was going to japan!!!! WHY!!!???

Apparently, the flight to Osaka is cancelled so everyone is going to narita first... Or something.

While going through the immigration, another accident happened. The custom area was absolutely empty. There were three officers working and only me, when I walked in. So I filled up the form and walked through. I was expecting the stamp and just walk off.

BUT, she was checking my passpost for so long and looking at the computer screen... What have I done? and I was asked to go to the small room next to the immigration... WHAT HAVE I DONE!?!?

Turns out that I overstayed my visa for 5 days.. oops. But I swear that I called the immigration months in advance to make sure i dont do that. I swear I was told that as soon as my student visa expires, the visitor's visa kicks in so I dont have to do anything...

Dudes were talking on the phone for 5min with the immigration. and he came up to me and said that I was fine. He said that they didnt particularly care... huh?

So i got to the gate about 10min to spare and i managed to buy a pair of ugg boots! :D :D

That was very eventful. Nice work Australia! you tried to make me stay longer:P

The flight was boring and uneventful as usual.

I had to sit next to two youngens, who managed to sleep through everything.

Even I couldnt do that :S

Hehe, they are telling people not to get scared of the sniff dogs. How could you be scared! and oops I was not supposed to take a picture of that... :S

Got picked up by my brother and mom. Didnt have to take trains all the way home. which was really good. and I could tell that mom was a bit nervous about the aftershocks after the first hit...

The brown tapes are meant to be holding all the glasses that are in the cabinet... not sure how effective they will be but seems to have kept mom busy for a while...

Mom wasnt also embarassed to show me what she was doing during the big earthquake.