Road Trip Diaries

I am writing at an iMac in the NWA lounge at Narita airport. The mouse tracking was painfully slow, but I’ve fixed it.

I woke up with a small headache. When I should have been packing, yesterday, I was playing Slitherlink instead, so I had to wake myself an hour early. Fortunately, everything fitted in my case. Queing to check out of the hotel, a man behind me tapped me on the shoulder. “Do you mind if I ask you what brand of suitcase that is? It’s very nice.”. I found the question strange. It’s a fairly standard soft suitcase, and I think we bought it in Walmart for around $20, to accommodate tattreasure accumulated on the road in the USA.

I didn’t feel up to dragging my heavy case around the train system, especially after discovering last night how far it was from the station entrance to the Marunouchi line (which was the one I would need, again) and how many flights of stairs were involved. Therefore, I was glad that I’d reserved a seat on a coach directly from the hotel to the airport.

The coach journey proved reasonably entertaining at first, passing very close to the Tokyo Tower, and providing a great view of the Tokyo Bay area. When the sights subsided, I got my head down for some serious Slitherlink.

British Airways’ Narita staff really love online check-in. It entitles even the lowliest customer to the Business Class check-in queue (although [cough] my frequent flyer status entitles me to that anyway). I was presented with a pass to the NWA lounge, since there is no BA lounge.

I traversed the same security gate were I had last seen Debbie. Riding the escalator where I had last seen her brought a small lump to my throat. I bought some Japanese sweets for the office, then I found the lounge, snacked a little, and sat at this computer. The flight is in 45 minutes — I expect boarding begins soon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 4:35 am and is filed under Japan 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.