Last week in Japan

The final week of our trip consisted mostly of going to work but Chris was able to leave the office early several days and remain on call and/or finish the day up back at the hotel. We took advantage of this by hanging around Nagoya (perhaps for the last time) and running errands, packing, and just getting ready to return home.  We ended up needing this extra time because we still wanted to do a little shopping both for ourselves and some people back home.  We ended up heading about 20 minutes outside of the city by train to a shopping mall, primarily because there was a Toys R Us there and we had a specific request from our niece which required a toy store.  While there we visited a large grocery store where we did some shopping.  The grocery stores in Japan are not all that different from what we have back home, the biggest differences being that Japanese people don’t seem to shop for a week’s worth of groceries at once; evident by the size of the shopping carts.  Basically the cart is a hand cart that you’d get for 10-12 items that you can put on top of a wheeled cart.  They also do not provide shopping bags, at least not for free and when you do purchase one you have to do the bagging yourself off to the side.  Being efficient people, in the supermarkets they start scanning the next person’s order as you are fishing for your money.  So while we tried to get the right change the cashier was nearly finished scanning in the next person’s order.

A landmark in front of our hotel.  No idea what its called but we refer to it as the Hershey Kiss

We went out for Shabu Shabu one more night and enjoyed the all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink for 120 minute madness one last time.  We had purchased several boxes of maple sugar candy in Vermont before we left for the purpose of giving as gifts to the people who we felt especially took care of us at the hotel.  We gave those gifts out throughout the week and said our good-byes each time we saw some of our new friends for the last time. 

Our waitress at Shabu Shabu..always happy to see us

 

Our flight out of Tokyo was not until Sunday evening but we planned on leaving Nagoya on Saturday and staying one more night in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo.  We had planned on somewhat of a leisurely day checking out of our hotel and getting to Yokohama but at the last minute Chris’s co-worker, whose wife was now in town, suggested we go to the Kirin Beer factory and tour in Yokohama.  We planned on a 3:00 tour which wasn’t really a problem but by the time we made the decision to go with them it was already past 9.  The trip to the factory would be about 2 ½ hours by a combination of two trains and a taxi.  We wanted to make a train at 11:20 out of Nagoya but we had to do some very last minute packing, mail a package to ourselves back home, check out of the hotel, and buy our train tickets.  So once again we found ourselves somewhat rushing.  Chris went to the post office to mail the package.  That ordeal took the better part of 20 minutes, most likely because Chris went to a closer, less busy post office which meant no lines, but also meant no English.  We finally left our room for good a little before 11, made our way to the concierge floor to say our last good-byes and check out.  We made it downstairs with what we thought was plenty of time to make our 11:20 train (which our friends already had tickets for) but when we got down to the ticket office it was pure madness.  As it turned out Monday was a national holiday and everyone was travelling this day.  We waited about 30 minutes in line for the tickets, far more than we had ever waited for any train before in Japan.  Our American credit cards do not work in their vending machines for tickets so we had to wait.  We finally got tickets for an 11:50 bullet train which we boarded for the trip north.

When we arrived at Shinagawa station in Tokyo our friends were already waiting.  We did have a small suitcase, a shopping bag full of stuff we were unable to fit anywhere else, and a backpack with us so we searched for a locker to store it all in.  Being the national holiday there were no empty lockers.  We did finally see a woman retrieving her stuff from a locker so we stood next to her and paid the locker so we at least had a place to store our backpack and shopping bag.  The suitcase would not fit so we took it to the beer factory.

The beer factory was very much like any other beer factory tour in the world except it was in Japanese.  They stored our suitcase at the front desk, which was nice because there were a lot of stairs and walking on the tour.  At the end of the tour we took our pictures with a big bottle of Kirin beer and we enjoyed our three free samples, which is really the only reason we came on the tour in the first place.  The taxi ride from the train station to the factory cost us about 900 yen, which was not at all bad.  On the way back the factory was giving out 700 yen coupons for the trip back which was very nice of them.  Free beer and a free ride!

Inside of our cab.  Lots of gadgets in there.

Malt, hops and water.  Just like home.

No idea what this says but we are 100% sure that the beer comes from the factory.

One of our samples

We boarded yet another train to take us to Yokohama and our hotel.  This was our first double decker train and we took a seat on the bottom deck.  This train had an interesting feature that we had not seen on any other train yet.  Right above each seat was a light which was either green or red.  Red meant your ticket had not yet been collected and green meant it had.  A conductor did come around to collect tickets and when she did your light went green but some people had passes with them that they held up to ceiling when they boarded which turned the light green.  We assume it was some kind of commuter pass they held up and while it was simple it showed us yet again how technologically advanced Japan seems to be.

On Sunday we slept in, knowing that we had a 24+ hour travel day ahead of us that evening and we would probably not get too much sleep.  We asked for a late checkout from our hotel, which they granted us, and we got in our taxi just after 1 for the trip to the Yokohama train station where we would board the Narita express (another train) for the airport.  The train makes limited stops, in our case only 3, before arriving at the airport after about an hour and a half.  While on the train you can follow your route on an overhead television, which kind of helped pass the time. 

 

We got to the airport just before 3 (our flight was not until 6:45) and we retrieved our luggage from the Black Cat delivery service counter.  We spent about a half hour repacking some of our stuff because we had bought some more stuff since we shipped our luggage to the airport on Friday and we also learned that with business class tickets we were allowed up to 70 pounds per bag instead of the normal 50. We checked in, a process that took all of 5 minutes including waiting on line and we did a little more shopping in the airport before heading through security and heading to the lounge.  We still had a pocket full of change plus some bills to spend so we bought some last minute souvenirs. 

May not look like much but since the smallest bill in Japan is 1000 yen ($11) this handful of change is about $30 worth

The only thing eventful about our trip home was that we got under 2 hours of sleep in about 20 hours of travel time.  We watched several movies on the longer flight and we also enjoyed watching our route on the personal televisions at our seat.  Our customs process upon entering the U.S. in Chicago, besides eating up a lot of time in line, was completely uneventful.  As it turns out we probably could have snuck in the habushu from Okinawa because our bags were never searched.  We had a two hour layover and the process of clearing customs, retrieving our luggage, clearing immigration, rechecking our luggage, getting on a train to a different terminal, then walking to our gate, took just about the entire 2 hours.  We had only about 10 minutes to rest in the lounge before it was time to board, not even enough time to enjoy a beer.  We got to LaGuardia at about 9 PM, grabbed our luggage, grabbed our rental car, and headed back to Stony Point where we arrived 6 weeks after leaving.