Day 5A: Sayonara Tokyo

Woke up and showered again (in the hot and humid Tokyo, this is an event exciting enough to note!), then sadly packed up.  We left our luggage downstairs so we wouldn’t be encumbered with it while walking around in the morning. 

       

We made our way to Tobu, however they weren’t open until 10 am, so had a coffee in an air conditioned café nearby – it was already too hot and humid to want to be outside.  An interesting note: we’d avoided coffee in Tokyo 1) because it was hot, 2) they had other beverages to try out and 3) we assumed coffee wouldn’t be great in Japan.  It should be noted that this coffee, while not up to the standards of Harbour Lights in Hobart, was better than every coffee we had in the US! (We’re talking espresso coffee Dad.  Your morning coffee was always superb!!).

At 10 am we wandered through the various levels of food.  It was fantastic.  A lot of the time we didn’t know what we were looking at, but it all looked good and was presented exquisitely.  From confectionary to marinated grasshoppers, it all looked good. 

 

At 11 am, the Japanese Tradition Craft Centre opened – so we checked it out again and visited the upper floors – it got even MORE expensive!  After this we were ready to put our visit to the food hall to use and picked up various items for lunch, which we had semi-outside – between the train station and the entry to the shopping centre where we could watch everyone pass by.   We noticed several women dressed in kimonos, which was pretty cool.

 

After this there was time for one last quick trip to Tobu’s kimono department, then it was time to return to Kimi – through the heat and humidity – and pick up our bags.  Then we walked back to the train station and arrived in plenty of time for our 1.30 pm Narita Express.  So we stood on the platform and sweated, tried to take sneaky photos of people in their kimonos, took advantage of the lovely vending machines with their cool, refreshing drinks, and stared at the train station cleaner sweeping – in perfectly clean uniform and brilliant white shoes.  A train station cleaner.  Who hadn’t become filthy while cleaning!

 

The Narita Express was, of course, clean, fast, and – most importantly – air conditioned, so by 3 pm we were at the airport and soon using the eCheck-in system.  And here is where we got the first notion that our flight would not be very enjoyable.  When we put our reservation number in, the check-in system put us into seats in the middle of the middle row.  We scrolled up and down the aircraft’s graphic, searching for better spots.  There were none- these were the last two empty seats together.  We were checking in quite early, and this was the best we were going go get.  Oh dear!  We spent the next couple hours looking through shops, dropping into the free internet café, and eventually boarding our full-to-bursting aircraft. 

And yes, it was the Flight From Hell!  In the centre, with men to either side of us on the isle.  Of course they’d already filled the overhead lockers with their belongings, so to add insult to injury we had to put our carry-on under the seats in front of us into what was already a strange and miniscule space. Instead of there being foot space under the seats in front of us, there were strange, wide metal boxes taking up that space.  Scott basically wedged himself in and couldn’t move for the flight.  At least the flight attendants were extremely polite!