I’d run across frequent references to Heathcote as one of the emerging wine regions in Victoria but hadn’t (as far as I can recall, and my memory can be a most unreliable conveyance) tasted anything from there, so I selected a bottle of Brown Brothers Heathcote Shiraz as a possibility for a night-cap after a hard day’s travel since, judging from the Limited release label, it wasn’t a wine I’d be likely to run into at the local bottle-o.
Having made those purchases I found myself a comfortable seat and devoted myself to writing up the events of the previous twenty-four hours while ‘Er Indoors indulged herself with a further wander around the shopping options.
Once the call was made, boarding went smoothly enough but some difficulty in the luggage compartment downstairs meant that the load needed re-stowing, delaying our departure by half an hour or so.
While we were taking stock of this development, a further announcement - first in English, then in Japanese - advised that the temperature on the ground at Kansai was a far-from-comfortable eight degrees Celsius. Obviously, the majority of the passengers, being Japanese, either tend to zone out while the English version of such announcements goes across, preferring to wait till they can get the information in their preferred tongue or else they just don’t understand English.
If that sounds like I’m being uncharitable, the English announcement had concluded, ‘Er Indoors and I had finished discussing the need to adjust our luggage to counter such extremes of temperature when the Japanese version of the same information went across, resulting in a noticeable shudder from the majority of the plane’s population.
Looking back on it, we decided that the announcement was probably a tactical move to provide those on board with something to talk about, or, if travelling alone to occupy their minds while the necessary rearrangements were being made down below.
Once we were in the air, there was nothing for it but to sit back and try to find something to occupy the mind over the flight’s seven and a half hour duration. Under normal circumstances I’d have a book to read and with the iPod supplying a suitable soundtrack that would be quite sufficient. But since, for reasons outlined above, I was carrying one book that needed to last me for a bit over two weeks, the time from take-off to touch-down was spent toggling between various modes - Customs paperwork, reading, writing the travelogue, eating, meditating on various subjects, listening to the iPod - and despite dire predictions from certain quarters I found enough variety to prevent the time from dragging unduly.
Once a wave of excitement went through the group of homeward-bound home-stay students in front of us as land came into sight we were able to spend the remainder of the flight trying to figure out exactly where we were.
That wasn’t as easy as you might think, given the haze that covered most of the visible countryside. The fact that we were looking directly towards the afternoon sun didn’t help matters much, but as we approached ever closer to Kansai International (KIX, in case you’re wondering, in Airport Code - KAN has presumably been allocated to Kansas City) ‘Er Indoors spotted more and more familiar landmarks until eventually we were over Osaka Bay on final approach.
Once we had landed, a lengthy taxi took us from the runway around three sides of the terminal building to the disembarkation point. The air bridge delivered us into the terminal building and, by the simple approach of following those in front of us we ended up on the monorail that carried us down to the inevitable encounter with Customs and Immigration
Among Hughesy’s circle of acquaintances it’s frequently been noted that when you wander into the local Post Office to find yourself on the end of a very long queue, by the time you’ve made your way to the counter and concluded your business you almost invariably discover that the previously-lengthy queue is now totally non-existent.
In most cases, apart from the Post Office staff, you tend to find you’re the only person in the building.
I had no idea the same principle applied in busy international airports.