The first flight of our journey was Brisbane to Tokyo direct and I’m thrilled to report that everything went smoothly.
There were a few reasons we chose Japan as the first destination of our year long trip. Firstly, neither Braino or myself have been to Japan and we its one place that we’ve both wanted explore. We’ve also heard how family friendly it can be.
Secondly, we wanted to start with a direct flight to a destination we’d like to spend sometime in and Jetstar’s direct flights from Brisbane to Narita Airport were very affordable considering it how far from Australia we were traveling.
When we said we were flying with Jetstar many people jokingly cast doubts about whether the flight would actually leave on time, if even at all. But I’m pleased to report that it was only delayed by 30mins. 30 mins, I can handle, ha!
We were also pretty happy that the flight time was during the day. It was scheduled to depart at 9:30am Brisbane time and set to arrive in Japan at 5:40pm. Sure, we had to awake up before sunrise to get to the airport by 6:30am. But the kids got a real kick out of waking up ‘at night time’.
How did we get to the airport? Thankfully Braino’s parents were able to drive the girls in their car with their car seats, while Braino and I went in an Uber with all the luggage.
Speaking of luggage, because be booked with the cheapest tickets we only pre-paid for 2 x 20kg checked in bags. Braino and I had large cabin bags that we right on 7kg and then girls each had their individual backpacks that were around 4kg each. It was a bit of a challenge fitting everything into the two large suitcases, but I really did my research on packing cubes and found some great one that compress down with an extra zipper. I also have a coloured coded system for each of use and it’s made packing very organised.
This Jetstar flight has the least amount of baggage allowance, many our future flights are much more generous but honestly, if it wasn’t for all the kids toys, pens and notebooks, I think I could have been even more ruthlessly minimalistic. We will need the extra space once we get into the colder climates.
Because we were also going super budget; we did not get the tickets that include inflight entertainment or meals. The entertainment was no problems as we were stocked up on pens, notebooks, colouring books, sticker books and we had downloaded a number of shows and movies from Netflix onto the iPad and our phones.
The kids were really good about snacks. We ate a big breakfast at the airport and only purchased minimal snacks onboard which were obviously overpriced. We probably should have BYO’d our own snacks but it would have been one more thing to squeeze into the bags.
Although the girls have all been on domestic flights in Australia, it was when they were all either babies or toddlers so this was technically the first flight they have been on that they can remember, and they all handled it so well. Even on take off and landing.
Overall we were stoked at how drama free the flight was and how well the girls handled the long travel day. When it come to airlines, I’ve always just happy to be on a plane, going somewhere exciting, no matter how budget the airline is.
Once we got to Narita Airport, we then had to catch a bus into Tokyo, which was about 2 hours. I had pre-purchased the tickets and while it was very fairly straight forward to find the bus at Terminal 3, the same Terminal we arrived at, this was were exhaustion really started to kick in. The kids had been great on the flight but the bus trip was a bit of a test of our patience. We had considering booking a night at a hotel near Narita Airport, so we could go straight there once the flight arrived but it would have cut into our sightseeing time the next day, so overall I’m glad we did push through and head straight in to our accommodation in Akasaka, Tokyo.
