2018 was without a doubt the best trip I've taken to Japan, but several problems have happened, today I'm going to report 2 flight-related disasters that happened to me.
Since I planned my trip to Japan, one of my goals was Sapporo in Hokkaido, luckily I was able to buy a ticket from Nagoya to Osaka for 10,000 yen (370 reais).
The big problem happened at the end of this trip, when on the way to the airport inside the train, a signal went out on the train track. Those signs that are close to the station.
This caused the train to be stopped for 2:00, they also didn't want to let anyone off the train. I could have avoided this problem if my friend hadn't taken the wrong train on the way to the station.
While the train was stopped, I had no idea it would take so long, so I decided to check in online, to make the situation worse. So never check in online.
Finally, when I got off the train, it was about an hour before the plane left. The bus was not able to arrive on time, because we missed another train that was going to the bus station while I was wondering what to do.
Arriving at the airport after 1 hour of the flight took place, the airline Air Asian was unable to do anything. We tried to book another trip to Nagoya or Osaka, because from Nagoya we intended to go straight to Osaka with Shinkansen which costs about 5,000 yen.
We looked at JAL and the ticket cost about 47,000 to Osaka, then we tried to turn to cheaper airlines like Peach and Jetstar, but they were all sold out. Then we went to the ANA counter where I told my friend, it must be more expensive than JAL.
There was a huge queue and I was discouraged and prepared to spend half an hour in line and hear that the price was over 40,000 yen. and there was nothing else, getting there the price of the flight to Osaka Itami was 47,000 yen.
For some miraculous reason, the woman at the ticket window asked if we were under 24 and made a discount where the ticket was 15,000. As we were going to save 5,000 shinkansen, we ended up losing this ticket causing a loss of 10,000 yen due to JR.
Could JR have reimbursed the delay? We don't know, but the same thing happened to my friend and the JR guards just apologized. There is a delay certificate that they give to present on the spot as at the missed flight counter, but as we checked in it was useless.
Missing an international plane in Japan
The second misfortune, or luck depending on the point of view, happened when it was time to return to Brazil. Since the beginning of the trip I was so obsessed with the 15th that I thought I should catch my plane on the 15th at night. I didn't realize the time was 00:30, and I showed up the other day after my flight left.
That’s when I discovered that travel insurance is of no use. Even in the insurance contract (Assistent Card) affirming my return home, they did not want to help. Stay away from the phone machines, they swallowed 1000 yen and didn’t solve anything.
If you need to make international calls to resolve these issues, use Skype. The women at the information desk were patient and tried to help as much as possible. I was waiting until 9:30pm for the emirates desk to open to try to rebook my flight.
Unfortunately they didn't want to do that, they told me to call or speak with the travel agency, because my reservation had a flight from another Brazilian company. The fine and fee for rescheduling the flight was around 600 reais.
After that lost day, I went to sleep at my friend Rodrigo Coelho's house, he has a great channel on Youtube and he's a very nice person. The next day I went through another struggle, trying to extend the visa.
Unfortunately I had reached my weekly withdrawal limit and my credit card limit. I was unable to pay the 4,000 yen to extend the visa, in desperation I ended up getting 2,000 yen from a sister of my religion who was with a shopping cart in front of Immigration.
After wasting the day at this immigration I was able to extend the visa for 15 days, even just presenting an online reservation for any flight I chose at the time. Unfortunately I was not able to present the real reservation, because the 15th is a public holiday in Brazil and my friends in Brazil were not able to call emirates.
Both at the Airport and on Immigration Day I didn't have any money, I could have gone hungry, but a friend from Sapporo sent me several codes on Line that could be exchanged for a set at Mos Burguer.
Now I will have a loss of almost 4,000 BRL just to reschedule my ticket. Fortunately I can still enjoy 15 more days in Japan, I hope to recover this loss with content that I will generate for you when I arrive from Japan.
If anyone is in the Tokyo area by the 27th, I'll be here and we can do something together. Sorry for not formatting the article well, but I wrote it through Ipad, and it may have some errors. When I get home I'll re-edit it.
