"I regretfully inform all of you that because of plane traffic at Narita airport, we will be circling outside Tokyo for the next hour and a half."

Sitting next to me on the half-full Boeing 767, my dad turns and gives me a knowing look before going back to sleep. Flight attendants return to the aisles and distribute water and cookies for the 60-some passengers, primarily young Japanese ex-pats with the occasional Canadian family thrown in there. The plan was to finish a night shift at the hospital and take the late morning flight to Tokyo Narita, the grueling 10-hour flight filled with sleep and satisfactory Air Canada meal service. At least what was supposed to be 10 hours ended up being 14 hours of interrupted naps, inattentive movie watching, short discussions of the travel itinerary with my father, and okay Air Canada meal service note 1. It maybe wasn't until 6 PM that the plane landed, and we walked the long passage from Gate 43 to the customs line, where a huge banner greeted us with:

"Welcome to Japan."

2013 was the first year I headed to Japan with the intent to stay for any significant period; luckily, a previous attempt to head to Japan, which was changed to Hong Kong instead, was for the better as, at that time, it coincided with the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Of course, this time around, Japan had experienced its worst winter storm in decades, clogging the country's transportation network. With excellent Japanese efficiency, we navigated through the customs and baggage claim line relatively quickly - half an hour max. Unfortunately, the winter storm had delayed numerous airplanes from landing, and it would be another 2 hours before we could get onto the super-express train for the 1-hour ride into Tokyo. Strike one.

Airports are meant to be busy, weather delays and disasters notwithstanding. The crowds and throngs of tourists and business people that crowd the intersections of Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong or the Flatiron District in Manhattan are dense and undaunting to those who think six people waiting at the crosswalk is "busy." When we reached Tokyo Station and walked up the escalators to the concourse level, it was nine PM on a Thursday.

To say that the station was "packed busy" would be a gross understatement. Salarymen and students traversed the train station only intending to go home. No stopping to converse. No grabbing a coffee. You learn quickly to (a) never stop in the middle of a passageway and (b) keep walking. It would be another half an hour to get to the other side of Tokyo to our hotel. It would be standing room on a semi-packed train: me with my giant backpack and my dad with his rolling suitcase. Strike two.

We arrived at yet another busy station. More students and workers heading home. 10 or 20 exits at the train station and without any means to figure out which exit led to our hotel. Per my personal travelling rule: "Do as the Romans do and always look like you know where you're going." My dad, not so much, but perhaps his look of confusion was to our benefit as a train station attendant noticed it and pointed out where we needed to go. He then went back to his post, which I noticed was maybe 40 meters away - the attendant noticed across a massive crowd of some lost tourists and came to give help! No strikes.

This pleasant reprieve was short-lived since, while not a particularly short walk to the hotel, when you've now been awake across a 12-hour night shift, a 14-hour airplane ride, and 4 hours of commuting into the city, you start to get cross with any street crossing. But of course, efficient Japanese city planning means that while train stations are a hub for the surrounding area, it doesn't mean those businesses and establishments are immediately near the hotel. Twenty minutes later, we reached the hotel, and I was done: too tired and exhausted to continue any further. Strike three.

Which merely meant that I wouldn't look for dinner at 9:30 with my dad.

And of the 100-plus days I've spent in Japan since 2013, that was my worst travelling experience in Japan.