Before arriving here, both a bad thing and a good thing had happened.

There was a near disaster after I inadvertently left my passport at a currency exchange booth in Heathrow Terminal 5 on Monday night (two days ago) after arriving there via tube and train from Edinburgh. Luckily, it was passed to BA staff who were able to find my mobile number on their system, contact me at a nearby hotel (I still didn't know it was missing yet), and invite me back to the terminal to collect it.

That was the bad thing. The good thing was that, for some reason, the original plane couldn't fly, and the replacement plane was a different type, so new seat numbers were issued as we boarded. At first, I had difficulty finding my new seat, but that was because I was looking in the wrong section - I'd been upgraded from premium economy to business class! For the first time in my life, I was flying in a plane where, with the press of a button, my seat could turn into a bed. Let's not get carried away though; it was quite narrow and not super comfortable, and it's not like I got any sleep, but still, so much better than just a seat with limited leg room.

The food was great and the in-seat entertainment system was able to display the 13-hour flight path from a number of interesting perspectives, including this one.

Today has been mostly good things, thankfully:

• Switched on the eSIM that had been bought and installed in advance, and it worked beautifully the first time.
• Exchanged the Japan Rail Pass voucher for the real thing.

There were still some potential or embarrassing baddies:

• The rail pass voucher didn't include my middle names, but my passport did. That caused some raised eyebrows at the JR office.
• At the convenience store, they typically hand you back change in a cute little tray, and you're supposed to take the change out of the tray, not walk off with both tray and change together. That caused a very stern look from the cashier (and remember, these people are trained to be extremely polite to customers). I was flustered; desperately trying to speak Japanese but only English was coming out.