October 9th 2024 : To the B&B near Heathrow, England

To enter the U.K., you can just place your passport with a biometric symbol on its cover on the reader of the eGate and look at the screen just in front of you. That can work if you are a British citizen, a national of an EU country, Australia, Canada, Japan, and …etc. It was supposed to work for me, too because I AM JAPANESE!! But it didn’t. Well, it’s said sometimes it doesn’t work just because of technical issues with an eGate. In my case, I don’t know but I may not have looked directly into the screen until it turned green or something. Anyway I needed to see the officer.

After going through the passport control, I should have been on the way to my accommodation without any problems… And another trouble occurred.

I wanted to take a black cab, the famous London taxi, to my hotel. But the first 5 drivers said they didn’t want to take me! The reason was my hotel was too close to the airport. They simply didn’t want to work for little money. And the driver who accepted me asked for 40pounds to get there, which was about 8,000yen. Of course it was too expensive but I had to accept it.

When I arrived at the accommodation, I got relieved with no troubles lying ahead… at least until the next morning.