Day 2: Spam, Sperm and ... Vegemite

Our Sydney accommodation, which was paid for by JAL, included breakfast and airport shuttle. However, for both of those things we needed vouchers/tickets, which we didn’t know until we needed them – the concierge didn’t give us these until we had found out that we both needed and lacked them.

Also, I had some tubes of vegemite to give to the expats we will be visiting, and decided not to put it in my checked baggage so that when we went through customs I could declare it as a foodstuff without having to sort through my luggage. Unfortunately, vegemite counts as a gel (wtf?!?!), so you’re not allowed to take anything more than a 100g container on board the plane. Bad luck expats, you’re going to have to go a little longer without a vegemite fix.

It has not yet gone 7:30AM – I wonder what other surprises are in store for us

Not quite so good times.

Well, the rest of day brought very little in the way of excitement. A 9 hour flight from Sydney to Tokyo; a 90 minute train ride in from the airport to our hostel (thank you Kate for your last minute reminder on how to get there!) and then what was left of the evening spent walking around the local neighbourhood, stretching the legs and getting some food.

We had dinner at a place called “Freshness Burger”. The burgers were fresh, the smoothies were icy (in contrast to the weather, with an expected minimum of 24 degrees tonight), and they sold SPAM. Yes, on display along with the drinks and sauces you could purchase, you could also get cans of SPAM! Haha – those crazy Japanese J

We also spotted a building which had... something... on its roof. Some kind of giant sculpture which we could only describe as a giant sperm. Despite actually walking over and around the building itself, we couldn’t determine what it actually was (neither the building nor the sculpture)... but we will work it out before we leave!!