Departure

Hi guys!

I've just arrived in Japan for few days and I decided to start writing my 'first' blog post, which is about my departure. To be honest, the departure was a really memorable and tough one. It's going to be a long post, so let's begin!

After loads of preparation, my departure date is set on Thursday, September 17th 2015. My campus has a representative office in Indonesia and they had arranged for Indonesian students to travel together from our home country to the campus which is located in Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan. In total, there are 87 Indonesian students (84 Undergraduate students and 3 Graduate students).

The plan is that we will go from Jakarta to Haneda (an airport in Tokyo, the capital city of Japan) by Garuda Indonesia for transit, and then from Haneda we will fly to Fukuoka (the biggest city at Kyushu island) by ANA, (All Nippon Airways, a Japan-operated airline company). Here's what the itinerary looks like:

But things don't always go right according to plan, right?

Our flight from Jakarta to Haneda was delayed because of technical failure. The aircraft was damaged so the officials moved us to a smaller aircraft. And that's where all the problem started. The number of the passengers was 16 passengers over the capacity of the smaller plane, so Garuda Indonesia have to re-route 16 passengers to another destination (which is Osaka) because there's no other aircraft available for Haneda. The process took a long time and our flight which supposed to take off at 23:15 got delayed until around 00:40 (almost 1,5 hours of delay). We arrived at Haneda at about 09:50 local time in the morning and we're rushing for the domestic flight to Fukuoka. We're supposed to meet an official from Garuda Indonesia to assist our arrival at Japan but we didn't, so we have to take care of everything by ourselves.

First, we have to go through the immigration. Since we're staying for years here, we go through a different set of process than the tourists. We have to fill up some forms and have our fingerprints taken, one-by-one. Then, we must wait for our Residence Card (it's like our ID in Japan) to be printed out before proceeding to the baggage claim. By the time we arrived at the baggage claim, it's already past 11:00 and the baggage drop counter for domestic departure had already closed, so we have to carry all our luggage by ourselves all the way to the Domestic Terminal in another terminal. Let me remind you that our flight to Fukuoka was supposed to take off at 11:30 and we're yet done with the process, as we still need to go through Customs Declaration and then checking-in again at the Domestic Departure for our second boarding pass. Also by 11:00, not all of our group members have finished the Immigration process yet (because we're travelling in a group of 87), so..., our group missed the flight to Fukuoka.

It was a mess then because there's nobody that accompanies us and we're struggling because the ANA Staff who's handling domestic departures cannot speak English as well as we thought. Our group was scattered across Haneda with no means of communication (because to use the Wi-Fi in Haneda is a little bit troublesome as we need to register before using it) so we're having difficulty coordinating our next course of action. Short story after hours of frustration, the Garuda officials has decided that it is their fault that we miss our flight to Fukuoka because of the first flight's delay and decided to send us to Fukuoka via Shinkansen, the famous Japan bullet train. The reason that we didn't get into the next flight is because all the remaining flights to Fukuoka was full that day because Japan was on National Holiday chain from Saturday to Wednesday (which is called the Silver Week).

So, our group went all the way from Tokyo to Fukuoka with Nozomi Train, the fastest train on Tokaido Shinkansen. Well some information for you guys: Shinkansen is not the name for the train itself, but rather, the bullet train track. Tokaido Shinkansen is the track that connects the major cities in Japan: Tokyo/Yokohama-Nagoya-Osaka/Kyoto. There are three categories of bullet trains that operate in the Tokaido Shinkansen, which is explained thoroughly in this image below.

Source: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2018_tokaido.html

We departed from Shinagawa JR Shinkansen Tokyo at 15:47 and finally arrived at Hakata Station (Hakata is the old name of Fukuoka) at 20:51. Yeah, it's a 5-hours trip by train! At Hakata Station we are picked up by the Indonesian senior students. From there, we went to our dorm by bus and arrived at around 01:15. But it's not over. There's a room guidance session which is mandatory for the moving-in students for about an hour, and I remember arriving in my room at around 02:40.

The first day is always the hardest, but this one really takes the cake. It's a 30-hours journey for me because I have to fly from Surabaya to Jakarta before and I'm extremely tired because I'm not a person who can sleep well on flights. My iPhone is dead also because there's no electric plug at the flight so I didn't manage to take any pictures in Japan T_T

Next time, I'm going to tell you about my campus as well as give you guys pictures ok?

See you then.