Mere Hours to go!

Well, it's finally arrived! Today is departure day. It's been a slow looong wait but we officially fly out this afternoon.

So the next update will be from the Land of the rising sun.......once we catch up on our sleep from the overnight flight :-)

Work time is over and play time starts soon

Well we have both finished work now for the next three weeks. The AUD is going well at the moment which means more spending money for Japan :) The boss was nice enough to give us some train driver caps to exchange in Japan. The weather is starting to warm up for our arrival, so it is looking like we will have a nice introduction to Tokyo when we get there 7:15am on the 23rd.

The mobile phone SIM card we have has a Travel Journal option. This will be turned on Monday afternoon once we get to the airport and should start to show our travels whilst we are there. You can view the Journal at...

http://www.ekit.com/ekit/tj/TJM/keith.evans

Seating on long haul flight's

Well with only seven days to go, I (Keith) decided to see what I could do about organising exit isle seats for our flight. Well the nice gentleman on the other end of the phone at Malaysia Airlines kindly put a PSR in the computer system for us to try and get it organised. With myself being 195cm tall, my knees without the person in front doing anything hit the back of the seat but when they recline the seat I am stuffed :( So I hope that request goes well :) We will be at the Airport just before check in starts to make sure things go to plan as best as it can.

2 Weeks and Counting

As the days tick by we edge closer to departure time. We have been getting the esential things done now so were prepared, and not running around like headless chooks at the last minute :)

For myself (Jamie) i was suggested a product called "Earplanes", as i suffer bad pain with the air pressure differences especially during take-off and landing. Fingers crossed they work!

And me being a big fan of Sonic The Hedgehog, ive discovered the SEGA Joyopolis amusement park in Tokyo. Yet another place to visit. At this rate we'll have little time for the trains were going over to look at! :)

But we are going to the Japanese Railway Museum in Saitama, which was opened in 2007.
You can read all about it at their official page: http://www.railway-museum.jp/en/index.html

One Month and Counting

Well, it's January 22 today so we have only 1 month till we jet off to the land of the rising sun!

We have our Rail passes in our possesion, and our hotels (the main one in Ikebukuro and the one at Fuji-Q Highland Amusement Park) are all booked.

Keep an eye on the blog as our posts will be more regular as we approach "Take Off!"

A must for the overseas traveller now days

For anyone from Australia travelling overseas, it is highly recommended you register your travel details with...

https://www.orao.dfat.gov.au/orao/weborao.nsf/homepage?Openpage

Moving closer

Well with only 10 weeks and 4 days to go, we have just booked our Japan Rail Passes for a 14 day block to use during our stay in Japan. The Green passes cost us 786AUD each :D That is with insurance and postage from the East coast.

Another step closer

Well our main place of residence while we are in Japan has just listed room availability for the start of the period we will be there, so that is now all booked for our arrival.

As you can see the Hotel is not far from the train station (6 min walking) , BUT as you can see by the station map below it might take us longer to get out than to walk to the Hotel :D

I am sure the friendly people of Japan will help us out if we get really stuck :)

Well it’s down to 3 months and counting, the updates should become a bit more regular as it gets closer to our departure time and we finalize the details of our trip. So stay tuned :)

New N-EX trains entering service October 1st

Yet another train to get pics of, luckily for us it will probably be the first train well ride on arrival in Japan.

Picture From http://shibuya246.com/

The new N-EX E259 trains are currently undergoing training and final testing before being introduced on the Narita Airport to Tokyo Express service. They will officially enter service on October 1st this year, in plenty of time before our arrival in February.

Ideally though, i'd still like to catch at least one of the older trains on one of our two journeys to/from Narita, but i guess it'll be ride them as they come!

For some more pics and video go to http://shibuya246.com/2009/09/16/narita-express-e259/

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On another note, Keith and I caught up with each other last week for some more planning of our itinerary. I cant believe how quickly it's filled up! We have stuff to do on almost 12 out of our 17 or so days in Tokyo. Alot of our train spotting will take place as we travel from attraction to attraction.

Although at least one Journey on the 500 Series Shinkansen (Which is not covered by our JR pass, so we have to pay a cash fare) has been slated in. More than likely it will be the day we go to check out the Meitetsu Railroad in Nagoya.

FUJI-Q HIGHLAND

FUJI-Q HIGHLAND is an amusement park about 14km NNE of Mt Fuji. Jamie called me up today and said WE ARE GOING HERE! and I said FOR SURE! My goodness a rollercoaster ride that gets you up to 106.8 Mph which equates to about 170.88 Km/h with a G-Force of about 4.3. Better make sure I don’t eat till after that one!

The planning for our trip is moving along at a nice pace giving us chance to plan things out as best as we can.

We have also tied up an evening at the Tokyo Tower at a nice height of 333m, it should make a nice vantage point with the 2nd observation deck at 250m to get some photos of Tokyo.

We also decided today that the rail passes we are getting (A two week one as they only do them in week blocks) , we will not exchange until the middle of the 1st week (Suggestion made by Jamie and I think it’s a good one). This will cover us in case we do too much shopping while we are there and we are a little low on cash. At least we will be able to make it to the Airport to get home :)