Aug 19th-20th : Departure

   The day to take off for our destination, on Friday 19th August, we wake up relatively early: the first flight is on 11.40 am from Stuttgart to rally the international airport from Frankfort where the next flight for Narita is on 1:40 pm with arrival at 7:40 am next day. Before that day, I monitored during several months that if Lufthansa would propose again ticket for 500€ with the A380 as they did once after they acquired a few of the new born from Airbus - in vain; Boston, Dubai, Shanghai, yes, but not Tokyo... too bad... I buy the tickets for twice the price, and got almost an heart attack when I receive a few weeks later the previously mentioned offer... 'luckily' our travel's dates are not matching with the purchasing conditions. So with the tickets in the pocket, we can already think about vacations.
    As usual, we go to the airport with train from the S-Bahn station down the hill: check-in and control done, we wait at the boarding gate. The adventure is going to start, and not really the way it was planed...

   Shortly before boarding, Lufthansa announces us that the scheduled aircraft was declared as unable to fly because of identified engines failures, or else, but that an alternative aircraft was made available for take off; thus costing us some time for the connection in Frankfort (the arrival time was 12.30 pm), but the stewardess is still confident we can make it. Now we are in the plane, and here comes an announcement from the commandant informing us that due to heavy thunderstorm over destination, the take off will be delayed (no point to leave the tarmac if the plane cannot land at destination). For sure we're gonna miss the connection. the Lufthansa's masters of logistics propose us to disembark or to stay in the plane: I ask then the waitress what would make more sense, but she is unable to give me a hint; here again the customer is somehow kindly asked to deal with the situation by himself.

   After some thoughts, we stay in the plane, following the logic that (1) we are int the plane and we do not want to have to go back home and do that again the next day (2) since Lufthansa is responsible for delivering the wares the customers at destination, if we arrive late in Frankfort they'll have to manage a an alternate route for us. Finally we take off, with good 1-2 hours delay on the schedule. The approach on Frankfort airport is somehow shaky as well, since we arrive as the perturbation is progressively leaving the area. Once safely landed, I watch over the window the queue of aircrafts having being delayed for take-off because of the same, and, recognizing an A380, I said ironically "well, that must be ours, if we run fast, we might still jump in..."

   So for sure we were not the only passengers being left aside because of the meteorological factor, so we had to queue for a little while to get finally to reach the connection counter and have some logistical expert to tell us what would be next route for Narita. In the plane, one the pilot assistant showed me earlier that there was a second plane in the late afternoon (which also help me to decide to stay in the plane) but mot with the A380, so I was hoping to be able to get in. Unfortunately As it turns out (Thank you Dilbert , for improving my communication skills), for whatever reason, it was not possible to get in... Following the logistic principle that moving a ware customer is cheaper than warehousing it providing him an hotel accommodation for the overnight, Lufthansa prosed us to flight with A380 (+1pt) via Beijing (-5pt) and thus arriving only 2 hours after the afternoon direct flight (what do I care, it is anyway late). Do we have a choice? well not really.
   I use some of our waiting time to read several pages from the books I took with me, books related to Japan such "Shinto, the kami way", "Geschichte Japans" or "Go, die Mitte des Himmels".

  

the A380 docked in Beijing

   Besides the few perturbations during the first 2 hours of the flight, the flight went thankfully event-less; as expected we are well provided in food and drinks, but somehow the collection of movies was somehow limited, comparing to KLM - Air France or Singapore Airlines. Indeed, I was hoping to recover my backlog in movies for the past few months... nevertheless I watched "Thor", "Kung-Fu Panda 2", "Paul". A few words on the plane as well: more spacious and comfortable indeed, though I could not find the fancy bar, swimming pool and golf simulator in the economy class... but the seats provide a better feeling of space on the sides, maybe because of the hull structure of the aircraft the distance between the window seat and the window itself is broader, and there is a bit more space in at gate's rooms for standing up (waiting for lavatory or simply stretching legs). Since Business and First classes are on the upper desk, I could not see these.

   The approach of Beijing by air is quite scenic, sharp green mountains are bordering the cities on the west,  making the separation with the deserts from Inner Mongolia. And being in this airport is also another piece of adventure. At Frankfort, we were told that the luggages transfer will be done until final destination, however we do not have the ticket that allow us to pass the flight connection passageway, so we go to the connection counter to ask how to proceed: there the lady tells us that we need to pick-up our luggages first (she called back-end office to know where the luggages where) and the check-in again... hmm ok, so we need to pass the customs which I'm a bit nervous about since I do not have a Visa, but it does not seems to be an issue: I explain to the 'stamp man' that I'm in transfer and do not stay in China and do not need to go out of the airport, and this seems to be enough to pass through. My wife can go quicker through the gates as she is Japanese (fewer administrative controls). Hopefully we have comfortable time until the connection flight! Now we need to find the baggage claims terminal, we follow the flow, somehow uncertain, since it drives us quite far away in the airport, taking a train shuttle. Having found the the right place (it was not that difficult but peculiar) we wait for our luggages, and wait and wait and wait... finally my wife goes to the claim office, where she's being told that the luggages are being transfered to the next flight... ok good, thanks for the unproductive waiting time, and as mentioned, hopefully we had quite comfortable time to transfer. So now we exit literally the international area and and are in the main hall of the airport. We found pretty easily the check-in counter, get our tickets and then have to go all the way back where we arrived earlier! We are in the same part of the building but just one floor below, what a long trip within the Beijing airport!

the beer served by Air China

   So we have some time to browse through the Duty-Free shops, where € are even accepted (I do not and do not want to exchange for Yuan), some tea shops are well stuffed. Then we head to the boarding gate, going through brand new hallways, totally emptied but from an 'army' of janitors facilitation managers, at least 3 per lavatory and there were at least 3-4 lavatories on the way. Finally we board, I got my Chinese beer and the flight went event-less, not even any perturbations. We land in Narita at adjusted-scheduled time, on Saturday 20th at around 5 pm.

   And guess what: right at the exit gate of the plane, two company ladies are waiting here asking passenger to check if their names are inscribed on their paperboard. My name is on, so the one from my wife: and to be announced that our luggages haven't followed yet! With the connection time we had in Beijing this is quite difficult to understand why. So after passing the control-freak customs (for non-Japanese passport holders, since around 2008, you need to give fingerprints of indexes from both hands and a they shoot a picture of your face; refusing to abide to security measures can lead to the denial of entry in Japan blah blah blah...) we can engage the discussion with the lady from luggages office on the whereabouts of our baggages, and from now on indeed, my wife takes over discussions for practical reasons. Fulfilling the luggages identifications spreadsheets, we are told that blah blah blah luggages were not boarded and will be sent home only the next day after next flight arrive (thus because of operating times: plane arrive at 5pm and it is EoB, so it is too late for them to carry luggages through Tokyo). I try to ask the lady for the 'standard' compensations, so that we can get something to cloth on for the next days (yeah clothes are in he luggages and we do not have wardrobes here). After a while, the lady needs to call her boss, we are granted 5.000¥ (around 50€, for simplification I counted during the whole trip with an exchange rate of 1€ for 100¥ - 4 years ago, the exchange rate for 1€ for 170¥, when leaving for Japan it was around 120¥ and at the end of the stay it around 105¥).
   Finally (it took more time fill the form and make the necessary than to unload all luggages from the plane), we go the underground train station, pick up a ticket for Yokohama and board the train. The cars are air-conditioned and at 7 pm it is night, but the heat can be felt at door opening when the train stops at an open-air station. (Tokyo is situated at around 35.7N, so at around the same level as Malta / Richmond / San Francisco, when Stuttgart is at 48.8N at around same level as the south part of Sakhalin Island, north of Hokkaido) Arrived at Tsurumi station, we purchased some spare underwear at a konbini, a kind of gas-station shops, but without the gas and a pretty broad scope of goods condensed in the minimum available space. We walk toward home when it starts to rain, hopefully we meet my wife's mother on the way as she came to our encounter with umbrellas.

   So in the end we reached home safely, though lately. A chance for me, my mother-in-law had the good idea to buy my a jinbei, a kind of pajama, thus i could feel a bit more comfortable at home. The diner is for tonight pretty late and consist in onigiri, filled rice balls, anyway we got enough to eat in the plane to hold 24h! Thereafter, the brother-in-law, code-named 'onii-san' (which is the title entrusted to the elder son among the children of a same family, if it is a girl, it would be 'onee-san'), came to re-iterate his invitation to his wedding ceremony, which will happen toward end of November, in France. Please, don't ask me why. Given that they have almost never set a foot outside Japan, that they do not speak any other languages but Japanese, it'll adventure. So the first thing I'll have to do once I'm back at work is to book a few another days off. For the rest of the planning, we'll see later. My wife and myself are also generously invited to the formal parents meeting lunch, next Saturday, in which both families (so the one from the future bride and the one from my brother-in-law) will meet for the first time (and maybe for the last time if it goes wrong, who knows). My wife and myself had done the same a couple of years ago, when her parents came to visit her in Germany, I called my parents to join for a week-end; you can imagine the terrific face-to-face where for any cross-discussion between parents, I have to translate first to my wife who then translates a second time to her parents (French > German > Japanese) and way back. Well for this meeting, I guess the language will not be a barrier for discussion for them, but I might be the only one not to really participate to the debates :S

    Happy to be back in Japan, we can now look forward for the next 4 weeks of vacations !