How I Made My Journey Home More Interesting

By Alex Moore, Australian National University (ANU), Australia

The thought of another 24-hour+ travel day was slightly daunting, but I managed to find the first and only layover I have ever been excited for. I found a $950 (c.£475) flight home that involved a 15-hour layover in Tokyo. This meant that I had a 9-hour morning flight from Sydney (a lot cheaper than flying anywhere from Canberra itself), then an evening and night in Tokyo before the 14-hour flight into London.

I landed in Japan at around 5 pm (after having the whole row to myself), so I quickly got the train to my hotel to check in, shower, and change. Since I only had one evening, I thought I would get a classic tourist spot checked off, so I headed to Shibuya crossing and then up to Shinjuku to have a wander around. By this time, I was starting to feel slightly like a zombie, so Kura sushi was the perfect option because I could order from my phone, and the food was brought by a conveyor belt, so I didn’t have to form many thoughts or words. I finished by heading back to my hotel near the airport (I treated myself because I got an employee discount thanks to my job whilst I was on exchange).

The second flight saw another early morning to get from Tokyo to London Heathrow. After 14 long hours, many films and maybe 2 hours’ sleep on the plane, I landed back in the UK 365 days after I first left for Australia (complete coincidence). Being able to shower and sightsee in the middle of my two flights really split the journey up and made the two legs feel very separate. I think that the fact that I went from Sydney to Tokyo to London within 48 hours confused my body clock enough to stop me from being jetlagged. Day flights meant that I didn’t get much sleep, but they also meant that I was so tired that when I did make it back to the UK, I just had to keep myself awake until a normal time and then had a full night’s sleep. I managed to avoid jet lag completely, and I think that my layover had a major part to play in this. The shower and bed made the journey feel much more manageable and comfortable, and I also got to see a small part of a city I had always wanted to see.

I would highly recommend shopping around for different flights because long layovers are not necessarily a bad thing, especially when you don’t have to recheck your bags. I was able to go through immigration and skip baggage reclaim to go straight to exploring, knowing my bags were going to be moved onto my London flight in the morning. This meant it was so much easier to make the most of the time I had, and most importantly, more time to sleep and spend horizontally to recover and prepare for my next flight.