Auckland

Somehow I think that the Japanese would close down their country for foreigners if it weren't for economical reasons.

Interesting fact #1: The normal subway to Tokyo's Narita International Airport leaves every two hours and takes 90 minutes from the closest station in town, which itself is about 30min away from the centre.

Interesting fact #2: The International Airport of the biggest city in the world closes at 11PM. Every day, the whole building is locked up until the early morning. (Thank you Mustafa btw for painfully discovering this one day before I left!)

Anyway I made it to the airport.
24 minutes before my flight left.
I was pretty sure I'd miss it, since boarding already started end everything but the Air Newzealand staff looked on their watch, made a couple of phone calls and said it was okay. I was relieved, until I mentioned that my luggage should be checked through to Melbourne. The woman stopped typing as if I had hit her on the head with a baseball bat. Slowly she rose her eyes and looked at me: "Melbourne?" I replied: "Yes, I'm transfering to Melbourne in Auckland, I'm not gonna stay in NZ." By this time the other girls got to know what I demanded and a lot of chattering on the phone happened and I was asked to present a lot of documents which were all unprinted in my email account. Of course I had a confirmed booking from Air NZ in Shanghai for Melbourne and of course I had a confirmed visa for Australia. But in their system they couldn't find either. 15min until my plane leaves.
They said: "Sorry, but you have to go now to catch your plane, please sort it out with Air NZ in Auckland." I thought, better than staying here and went with one of Japanese girls running through crew security checkin, etc. And barely made it.

I thought everything will be fine in Auckland, it's their headquarter and they'll know what to do.

In Auckland the immigration officer is checking my passport and immigration card and casually asks me how long I was staying. I replied: "Only 3 hours, I'm flying to Melbourne this afternoon." She looked at me and said: "Oh, is that so? Can I see your ticket please?" D'oh! Not good. I tried to explain her that I had to sort that out but she demanded a ticket. I remembered that originally the next flight booked was Auckland -> Honolulu and looked through my documents for the schedule. Unfortunately the print-out that I had with my was from the 10. August '08, before I left. And on this sheet of paper the flight was still scheduled for the 31. of March, she didn't like that and just said: "I'm sorry but at the moment you don't meet the requirements to immigrate here, please follow me."

I was led to a waiting room where a couple of shady men were hanging around with similar our more severe problems. After some time I got on the phone with an Air Newzealand person somewhere and after some 2 hours of talking and giving her information all my tickets got rescheduled and I could go and immigrate: "Good news Mr. Arnold, you have been issued a 90 day visa." Thank you very much, I'm leaving in 45 minutes and can't come back to NZ due to the rtw-ticket regulations.

Anyway I made it to Australia.

And I even got a pic from NZ!
Therefor I lost my sunglasses at Melbourne airport.