Day 1
There were hiccups even before the plane took off. Schipol airport in Amsterdam was having a power failure and working on a backup generator, no flights could land or take off. So instead of taking off as planned at 10am we were waiting in the plane. We started to worry as we only had a 2h window for the connection flight to Fukuoka. The pilot said all flights were fully booked and there were around 40 people in our flight going to Japan. So losing the flight could mean having to wait a day at the airport for availability in another flight...
The flight was 1.5h late. It was supposed to take 1.5h to Amsterdam but the pilot managed to do it in 30min?!? No complaints there!
We went straight to the connection flight terminal. That alone took almost an hour as the airport is huge! KLM staff told us to wait for seat allocation, in their words 'we'll let you know when we are ready to allocate seats'. It makes sense not to allocate seats before as we could have lost the first flight and seats can be given to other people but we were left a bit edgy as the room was packed with passagers and the plane wasn't as big as we had imagined.
Business passengers were called to board and we still didn't had seats. As I approached the staff to ask (again!) about it, I noticed they were trying to find out how to say my name to handover our new tickets (with seat numbers) :) That was a relief and we were on the go again.
Breakfast on the first KLM flight was rubbish! A small piece of cake and juice was all we were given and we also had some leaftover fruit we had brought with us. There was no time at Schipol airport to browse the shops. By the time we boarded the second flight we were pretty hungry. Yet, some hours passed until we finally had lunch/dinner (depending on time zone). It was worth the wait though! Food was delicious, and so it was the ice-cream we had mid-flight (soothing as it was getting hot) and breakfast.
Novices as we were, flight technology had the wow factor. Do you know that for a fee you can do phone calls and send e-mails? We spent part of our flight playing games, watching movies and tracking the plane's progress in the interactive map. It takes ages to cross Russia and China!
Did we sleep? Yes and no. We were provided with a pillow and a blanket. However, we weren't happy with the neck pillows, Manuel didn't had an eye mask and Jorge couldn't keep his earplugs in. Flighing long haul wasn't as daunting as I had imagined. We managed to rest a bit, KLM fligh attendants were great and I managed to go to the toilet only once (I am scared of airplane toilets!).
Fukuoka is not the most pretty or exciting of cities. Aesthetically pleasant and well kept temples are laid side by side with high rise buildings, supermarkets, small square shops and garages and a flat's balcony dipping into the temple's grounds. So much care and aesthetic planning went into the temples and shrines but the same doesn't seem to be applied to city planning. However, cherry blossoms are in bloom so all is well.
We were lucky to watch part of a tradicional japanese wedding on our visit to Kushida Shrine. How beautiful the bride looked in kimono! It seemed a very formal cerimony, with female guests dressed in yukatas and the monk and his assistants/singers performing what looked like old rituals.
By 3pm we were really tired and decided to follow spanish wisdom and have a 2h siesta. It was enough to revive us for an evening stroll.
After about an hour walking around Nakasu and Tenjin quarters, we decided on a small japanese restaurante in Nakasu where the menus are in japanese with not a lot of pictures and no-english speaking staff. Fortunatelly we are firm believers that a smile and gestures take you everywhere. The cook tried a translation app to answer our questions, we used a japanese phrasebook and ended up having a fantastic yakitori meal which are a specialty of Fukuoka. Yakitori are typically grilled chicken skewers but we had a multitude of ingredients: liver, heart, pork, sausage, mushrooms, quails eggs, cherry tomatoes (wrapped in bacon taste very much like English Breakfast), yam and a small round yellow berry-type food which we have no idea what it is.
First day was great. Bring on more!
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