Osaka to Narita
Today is a day of mixed feelings. It’s the last full day of holiday with Debbie, and when she flies home tomorrow, I’ll start the longest time I’ve spent away from her for at least 9 years (two weeks). On the other hand, working in Japan is going to be exciting.
Today’s mission was to get to our airport hotel in Narita, not too early, not too late, and organise our bags so I keep what I need and Debbie takes home the rest.
To acheive the “not too early” part, we left our bags at the hotel after checking out, and aimed for the closest department store (ostensibly in search of a yakuta). It was very Are you being served? A smart young lady operated the lift on our behalf, and announced the departments on each floor.
At the top floor, we were lured by a cake shop, and I had a morningu setto of coffee and ham and egg sandwiches. The coffee was a bit ropey, so it was lucky they redeemed themselves by cutting the crusts off the sandwiches. Debbie had American style pancake with maple syrup.
On the same floor, there was some sort of sale, and Japanese ladies of a certain age fought tooth and nail for bargains. That was pretty much the only interesting thing in the department store, which was really too fancy for the likes of us.
The lift back down didn’t have an operator. We were forced to operate it ourselves, like commoners.
On leaving, we spotted Muji. Debbie likes Muji. It had a lot of brown things. We were struggling to kill time, truth be told. We meandered back towards the hotel. On the way, I got soppy, and realised that the photo I have of Debbie, to pine over while we’re apart, was out of date. We popped into the ground floor of one of the many arcades to use one of their photo sticker machines. We couldn’t really work out what was going on, but the end result was some pleasantly cheesy pictures, 200% sweet, cutie and colourful!
We returned to the hotel, got our bags back, and dragged them to the train station. We enjoyed bento and DS backgammon on the way to Tokyo.
In Tokyo we caught the Narita Airport Express, and before long we were standing around in the drizzle waiting for an airport shuttle.
The Narita Airport Hilton is an enormous round building with a rocky fountain as its centerpiece. Of course, it’s just an airport hotel, and all you can really do is eat, sleep and watch TV.
Debbie organised our bags. We went for dinner. Since it was our last dinner together for a while, we allowed ourselves the Special Sakura Menu — which turned out to be an excellent choice: several courses of beautifully presented food.
Edward Scissorhands is on TV. Now if you excuse me, I have better ways to spend our last few hours of quality time together than writing this.