Sleeping in Airports

Not something we make a habit of, but in the spirit of adventure - plus a little bit of tight-arsedness - we opted to spend our last night in Japan sleeping at Narita airport.

We spent hours on the internet looking for a nice, cheap place to stay on our final night in Tokyo, but nothing really seemed worth the money. Nice stuff cost a bomb, cheap stuff was either nice and fully booked, or grubby and run down, according to places like TripAdvisor and other hotel review sites.

So we went a bit wide with our web search and discovered www.sleepinginairports.net, a nifty little resource which tells you what you can look forward to if stranded for the night by circumstance or cheapskateness.

So at 10 o'clock on Saturday night, after a very cheap supper of cold noodles and beer from the airport Lawson store, we were cordially guided by a Narita security guard to the meeting area in the South Wing of the first floor. A couple of passport checks later and we curled up on the seats for a nights sleep.

There were about 6 other people sleeping there with us. Quite a mixture, including: a european backpacker, a well-heeled asian lady, an american businessman, a dodgy Gary Glitter lookalike, a large scandinavian man and - our favourite - a weirdly dressed guy (shorts, leather jacket, sunglasses) who seemed to be up to something. He was closely questioned by airport security, and seemed to have suffered some sort of mishap - no money and no way of getting anywhere... and looking shady.

Not the most comfy night ever, but we felt totally safe, if a little cold. We were up at 05.00 the next morning and first in the queue to check in for our flight to Bangkok, where we saw our Air Asia flight to Singapore showing a delay of 2 hours. A bit of quick thinking and we got lucky by busting onto an earlier flight.

And before we knew it, about 36 hours after we first stepped into Tokyo Narita Airport, we were walking back into the sweltering heat of Singapore to spend a week with Steve and Zoe.

Ben