There are, for a start, things that come over with you that you won't be needing again until the homeward leg, and one of them is the second suitcase.
Given the need for speed on occasion when you'd in transit and switching train services two suitcases is one more than necessary, and I'm increasingly inclined to put a large question mark over the other one. In any case, anything that won't be needed until the return leg goes into the other suitcase, which then gets put out to pasture until it's home time.
From there, you cram everything you need into the other suitcase, a travel bag and a back pack, which is what gets lugged around up to the point where what you need for the rest of the travel leg can fit into the other two bags and the suitcase, loaded with everything else, is dispatched by courier to join its brother.
By this point, we're usually back in a major centre, and increasingly using the subway to get around. After a day or two of lugging a suitcase up and down flights of steps you're quite happy about not having to do it anymore.
It would be easier if you could fit everything you need into one airline size carry on bag, but we haven't quite managed that.
Yet.
Much of that comes down to how often you want to wash, access to coin laundries along the way and the effect taking a morning or evening to do the washing will have on your travel arrangements.
In any case, with the roaming done everything needs to be rearranged for the homeward leg. That Australian mobile phone that doesn't work overseas will be required on return, and pillows and blankets needed for the night flight come into play as well.
Then, with everything stowed away, it's time to sit down and wait for the taxi to the airport, which might seem like an extravagance, but works better than the alternative, which would be a taxi back to Myodani station, a struggle with the stairs at Sannomiya and the airport shuttle the rest of the way.
You book the taxi, which is actually a coaster bus, in advance, and they call you back with a pickup time. Experience suggests we're usually the first of at least two pickups along the way.
Hit the airport, and it's the regular processes that go with international travel, the check in, the meal before we head off, the move through immigration on the way out, the wait in the departure lounge and, finally, the seven hour flight that will deposit you in Cairns around five in the morning.
And that arrival time creates it's own little kettle of fish.