After a reasonably short transit in Hong Kong, we boarded our flight to Japan.
Japan had always sat somewhere on my bucket list, although if I'm honest it had never made it anywhere near the top. If it had, I probably would have visited years earlier.
The girls, however, had very different ideas.
Ever since kindergarten they'd been fascinated by Japan. I still have photographs of them dressed in tiny kimonos at school, proudly learning songs and simple Japanese phrases while I smiled politely, never imagining that one day we'd actually be wandering the streets of Tokyo together.
As they grew older, that fascination only deepened. Anime. Music. Food. Language. It all seemed to resonate with them, especially our eldest. I'm fairly sure one of the deciding factors in changing primary schools in Year Five was the promise of a school trip to Japan in Year Six.
Then Covid arrived.
The trip never happened.
So this, in many ways, felt like unfinished business.
For me, the excitement was slightly different. Having grown up in Britain, I'd spent years dreaming of sunshine. Living in Australia hadn't exactly cured me of that. Somewhere deep inside I was still programmed to believe holidays should involve warm weather, sandals and the possibility of a swim.
Travelling somewhere colder than Brisbane felt slightly rebellious.
Japan wasn't even part of the original plan. The conflict in the Middle East had rewritten our flights only a week before departure, replacing Abu Dhabi with Hong Kong, Tokyo and Helsinki.
Sometimes life chooses your itinerary for you.
As the captain announced our descent, another thought occurred to me.
Cherry blossom.
We'd accidentally arrived during one of the most beautiful seasons in the world.
Perhaps the universe was making up for the cleaners.
Normally I research absolutely everything before travelling. I'm the person with colour-coded notes, restaurant lists and contingency plans for the contingency plans.
This time I'd barely had time to breathe.
Being vegetarian, gluten-free and intolerant to preservatives and glutamates meant Japan wasn't exactly designed with me in mind. Soy sauce. Miso. Seaweed. Dashi. MSG. It was becoming increasingly obvious why Japan had never naturally climbed to the top of my travel wish list.
My one piece of actual research came courtesy of whispered conversations backstage during our daughters' final theatre weekend.
"You absolutely must buy the Tokyo travel card at the airport."
That was the advice.
No explanation.
No further detail.
Just: "Get the Suica travel card."
We agreed. How hard could it be?
The answer, it turned out, was considerably harder than expected.
Tokyo greeted us exactly as I remembered Asian cities doing. Big. Busy. Bright. And somehow both wonderfully organised and completely overwhelming at exactly the same time.
Having lived in Hong Kong years earlier, I thought I knew what to expect.
I didn't.
Age has a funny way of changing your tolerance for crowds. When I first moved to Hong Kong, Sydney had felt like a sleepy country town. Now, after years living in quieter parts of Australia, even Sydney occasionally felt a bit much.
Tokyo was operating on an entirely different scale.
Fortunately I'd packed sensibly. Or so I'd convinced myself.
Between the four of us we had two large suitcases, three small wheelie cases and backpacks. One of those small wheelie cases deserves a chapter of its own. Every family has one member who refuses to cooperate. Ours just happened to have wheels.
We joined the steady procession towards the train station.
Step one.
Buy the travel cards.
Standing in front of the ticket machines after a long-haul flight, surrounded by queues of people who all appeared to know exactly what they were doing, our confidence began evaporating at an alarming rate.
We pressed buttons. Cancelled buttons. Pressed different buttons. Read instructions. Read them again.
Nobody wanted to be the confused tourists holding everyone else up, so we performed the universally recognised manoeuvre of stepping politely to one side while pretending we had intended to do that all along.
Just behind us stood three young international travellers.
"They'll know," we whispered.
We watched them approach the machine.
Thirty seconds later they looked even more confused than we did.
It was strangely comforting.
After what felt like a small university degree in Japanese ticketing systems, we emerged clutching our precious travel cards.
Success.
Or so we thought.
Finding the correct platform felt like descending through layer after layer of an underground city. Escalators. More escalators. Then another escalator. By this point I was beginning to suspect Tokyo might actually exist entirely underneath itself.
We reached what we believed was the correct platform and joined the impeccably orderly queue. We felt rather pleased with ourselves.
Naturally, that was when a conductor hurried towards us.
He was smiling.
Never trust a smiling railway official approaching you with purpose.
He spoke rapidly in Japanese while gesturing energetically towards our tickets. We responded with the sort of enthusiastic confusion only English speakers abroad can truly master. The more we explained where we were trying to go, the more concerned he seemed to become.
It was also around this point that I noticed something fascinating.
Our daughters, who had spent years learning Japanese, had suddenly developed an extraordinary inability to speak. Not a single helpful word emerged. Instead they adopted the universal teenage expression that says, "We absolutely know what's happening, but if Mum and Dad are determined to publicly embarrass themselves, we're not getting involved."
Purush and I carried on bravely.
Or perhaps stubbornly.
A new railway guardian gently steered us away from the sleek, futuristic train we'd confidently assumed was ours. Only later did we realise we'd been trying to board the Shinkansen.
Instead, he personally escorted us to the correct train, made sure we boarded safely and somehow communicated exactly how many stops we needed before he finally stepped off.
Sometimes kindness needs very few shared words.
By now darkness had fallen. So had the temperature.
Coming from Queensland, I'd packed for what Australians optimistically call "cold." Within half an hour I was wearing every single layer I'd brought. I resembled a woman attempting to survive Everest using only the contents of a carry-on suitcase.
We reached our station.
Victory.
We navigated the ticket gates.
Victory again.
Surely all that remained was a short walk to the hotel.
Then we looked up.
Stairs.
Nothing but stairs. Flights and flights of them disappearing somewhere towards what we hoped was street level.
Somewhere above us was Tokyo. Somewhere nearby was our hotel. And somewhere, I hoped, was central heating.
Our Japanese adventure had officially begun.
