Sept. 26: Tokyo and out

So now that I had a routine, it was time to leave: get up, get dressed, go into the subway station for an IHT, stop at the convenience store for some sushi rolls and a bottle of Blendy coffee, back to the room. I was done and packed in almost no time, and even remembered to put my Swiss Army knife in the suitcase instead of my pocket.

In the subway, I’d noticed that the elevator dropped you off behind the fare-gate, so that, I figured, would make a problem explaining to the guard and such -- or maybe it wasn’t possible to go down to track level -- so just to minimize problems I called a cab. Bad move. The guy knew where Shinjuku was, but had no idea where to leave me to get the Narita Express. We circled and circled, the fare going up, and finally, he saw the airport bus and asked the driver where the best place to leave me was. I have no idea what kind of answer he got, but I ended up where I’d started, at the West Entrance. He was so apologetic that he offered me no receipt (which gets printed out automatically) in exchange for shaving ¥400 off of the ¥2400 fare. Hell, that was okay by me.

I had to wait close to an hour for the train, though. They are incredibly convenient, but they don’t really run as often as you’d think. I was worried once I got on because I’d wanted to get there at 10:30, and as it developed, the train took 30 minutes longer than I’d thought. But at Narita, boarding went smoothly, and pretty soon, I was sitting in the 747, happy to be heading back home after three weeks in Japan.