Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyōto and Mount Fuji
In February 2023, we once again had the opportunity to visit Japan. The trigger this time, as in 2014, was the visit of one of our daughters. Obviously, our first trip to Japan in 2014, when we met our eldest daughter in Osaka and traveled through Japan for two weeks, had left its mark on our youngest daughter Luise, who joined us at that time. She had since decided to study Japanology and history. In order to improve her Japanese language skills, she was spending a semester abroad in Tsukuba near Tokyo starting in September 2022. So we took the chance to visit her there during her semester break and to explore Japan together once again. We planned to meet Luise in Tokyo and, after a few additional days in Tokyo, visit Hiroshima, Kyōto and the Fuji region.
February 11th, 2023
We have been counting the days for weeks, and now the time had finally come. The bags and the photo backpack had already been packed the day before. At 4:30 a.m. on the dot, the cab we had ordered picked us up and took us to Düsseldorf Airport. We had enough time. Check-in went smoothly and we were able to enjoy a nice breakfast at the airport. Then it was time to leave. At 7:00 a.m. we were already sitting in the connecting plane to Frankfurt, when suddenly the captain from the cockpit reached for the cabin microphone and told us that “there is a light on in the cockpit that should be off”. He said he was going to restart the system and then get back to us. Like we do at home: “if it doesn’t do it, then reboot”.
Shortly afterwards, a technician got on board, but in the end he obviously couldn’t solve the problem either. Since the aircraft was rated as “not flightworthy,” we all had to get out again😯.
Since we had planned a generous time buffer of 3 hours for the connecting flight in Frankfurt, we were initially still optimistic that we would still be able to reach it - unfortunately, this was not the case. Instead, our airline rebooked us on a replacement flight to Frankfurt at 2:40 p.m. and an overnight connecting flight to Tokyo at 8:45 p.m. This required us to check out completely, retrieve our luggage from the baggage carousel, check it in again, go through the security check again, and check in again.
We then had to spend the rest of the day at Düsseldorf airport. Thanks to a voucher from our airline, we ended up having lunch at our breakfast restaurant - I joked that I hoped I wouldn’t have to go there again for dinner 😉.
To make a long story short: Our connecting flight to Frankfurt was also delayed, it finally took off around 4:10 p.m.
Nevertheless, we reached our rebooked flight in Frankfurt, which then also departed on time. Due to the Ukraine war, Russia had to be completely bypassed, so the flight to Tokyo took almost 14 hours.