Looking at plastic food, well it is edible but looks like plastic. You know one of those toy sets for children to play grocery shopping but this highly coloured plastic wrapped gift box was being sold as food.

So what else was I supposed to do for 5 hours in transit at Tokyo airport.  Doing laps around all the duty free shops that look the same as all over the world but with a few differences.  Rules seem to be changing all the time lately, ridiculous laws regarding liquids on planes. It was already stupid to introduce no nail scissors or penknives and then no toiletries or liquids exceeding 10ml. Come on, international highly trained terrorists are not going to get on the plane with a deadly weapon hidden in their Colgate toothpaste tube.

At Sydney I passed through Customs and THEN did my duty free shopping, all good and normal as per usual. I chose an attractive long bottle of sweet dessert wine with gold flecks floating in the liquid. Arriving in Tokyo at 6am and having to wait in transit, we went through the scanner machine again. I was pulled beside with my bag. The offending article was the wine; it was more than 100ml liquid.Well duh, of course it was. I explained to 2 non-English speaking Japanese customs officials that it was duty free. I had 5 hours to kill so could afford to spend half an hour arguing. I spread out my cash docket, my boarding passes, my tickets but I lost the battle.

WORD OF WARNING – DO NOT BUY DUTY FREE ALCOHOL IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE IN TRANSIT!! Sydney duty free did NOT warn about this latest insane rule, bastards.  And because I needed to stay calm and not trigger off any heart palpitations in the middle of my long international flight I couldn’t even lose my temper! Bastards.

I was a coward in the toilets; they had arms like an armchair on either side of the toilet bowl. With play buttons Stop, Spray, Bidet, Flushing Sound, Volume, Water Pressure and Powerful Deodoriser. One could have had a lot of fun if one was in the mood.

And if you’re a parent with a small child there was a mini seat in the corner of the toilet that you could slip baby into, a grandstand front row seat to watch Mum taking a dump, so practical. After 5 long hours I was happy to be back on the plane and heading towards London.

Be Sociable, Share!

•