Let's get Practical

Let's get practical, practical
We gotta get practical, let's get into practical
Let me hear your suitcase talk, your suitcase talk
Let me hear your suitcase talk......

First stop: Tokyo, Japan

When organising this adventure holiday each family member had the opportunity to choose a destination and/or event that they particularly wanted to experience which could be included in this trip. Going to Japan was Rosiegirl's request so off to Tokyo we go to begin our magnificent adventure holiday.

Because of the way our hotel rooms were booked (and the size of the double bed!), I chose to be roommates with Sunny and Rosiegirl while Adam had a room to himself. Not too bad, lots of girly fun to be had! We reached our room, I put down my bag, opened it in the corner, turned around and the floor had disappeared. An explosion of clothes, toiletries, shoes, jackets and bags had confiscated any resemblance of square footage - hmmm, this is not very practical I thought, just functioning may be trickier that I anticipated! So herein lies our first practical lesson - keep your stuff in your own space or else Mumma will go slowly crazy!

I have to mention here that Rosiegirl is a bag packing champion. If there existed a bag packing Olympics she would be the gold medalist. Her bag packing skills and prowess are to be admired and we all benefited from her particular travel gift before we left. Our bags started out orderly and as we leave Japan today and head for Paris our bags are sorted once again. It's just the in between time we gotta work on! So ok, nothing too difficult here to solve, sure I may have had a couple of outbursts because I couldn't reach my bed without embedding something in my foot but other than that I was cool!

Did you know Tokyo railway tickets are tiny? We were all amazed at their lack of size and this fact was certainly tested on our journey home from Disneyland. It's late, cold and wet (yet we still had a fun time at Disneyland despite the weather), and we are on Japan Rail (JR) almost at Tokyo station when Sunny announces "I've lost my ticket!". I'm thinking, oh bummer, (actually insert swear word here) what do we do about this? I'm too tired to deal with this, blah, blah (yes whingey mother arrived!). Then this very lovely Japanese man sitting next to me said he saw her drop it a few minutes ago, and there the ticket was at her feet. Yay! Saved from dealing with this problem! We all happily get off at Tokyo station to change railway lines - by the way Tokyo station is absolutely HUGE - then Rosiegirl pipes up and says "I've lost my ticket!". Oh crap! Really! In my 'I don't really want to deal with this but have to' mindset, I find a rogue ticket on the ground with the right date and sufficient fare. I suggest we to go our destination and use this one. Of course it doesn't work! Trying to then explain to the ticket man who has zero English why we have this 'fake' ticket was impossible so I paid the whole fare again and we were on our merry tired way. Practical lesson learnt - put your railway ticket somewhere safe or Mumma will swear out loud!

I must mention here that Sunny navigated the JR and subway very quickly and was able to guide us all on many complicated journeys around Tokyo. I knew her fab maths brain and skills would come in handy practically someday!