Day Eight-- HOME

Tiffany very lovely-like woke me up at 5 this morning. (I forgot what it was like to be woken up by a person rather than an alarm) I stuffed my things away and checked my email once more.

Here was the plan:

Leave the hostel at 7 AM
Get on the Shinkansen to Nagoya for about an hour
Ride another train to the airport for another hour
Fly to Narita at noon
Switch to a 3:30 PM plane to SF
Arrive at 7:30 AM that same day.


But no.


We arrived in Nagoya airport and were in line to get our money changed when Hurley announced that our flight was delayed due to mechanical troubles, and we would miss our second flight if we waited.

So, speedy-quick, we decided to take the... scenic route.

We rushed back onto the train to Nagoya Station and hopped onto another Shinkansen for Tokyo.

(Actually, if we had stayed on the first shinkansen we would have ended up in Tokyo. Huh.)

This was kinda fun. The train was really empty, so I got a row of 3 seats to myself. I stretched out and drank Coke. Adam ate a tonkatsu sandwich, which I wanted, but he got the last one... Sad...

Another plus?

We got a freakishly AMAZING view of Mt. Fuji. I got photos~

Finally, the shinkansen arrived outside of Tokyo, in Shinagawa. We VERY QUICKLY switched trains. The weird part?

From Shinagawa to Tokyo, we had to stand in the baggage area. From Tokyo to the airport, we had seats.


Peachy, right?


Nope.


Turns out, there was no way to move from the 7th car, where the conductor stuck us, to the 4th, where our seats were. Apparently he forgot to tell us we had to get out of the train and move around, so we missed our chance.

Somehow, Hurley managed to talk the train people into letting us use the emergency corridor. It was scary.

Finally, we were in Narita.


We rushed through the airport, made some wrong turns, but the airport staff were really going out of their way to help us. I was so impressed.

(The security/customs section in Japan is so ridiculously smooth and fast. The only problem we had was when Josh to take off his belt when going through the metal detector)

Long story short?

We arrived at the airport at 2:35. Our flight left at 3:30. We were all in our seats on the plane by 3:15.


Hurley was so impressed and relieved, when he tried to give us a congratulatory speech, he couldn't even put the words together.

Currently, as I am writing this, it is 5:08 AM in Cali and 10:08 PM in Japan. We all filled out thank you cards for the chaperons (and discreetly had everyone write a message without the adults noticing) and we have less than 2 and half hours left on the plane. I'm listening to Dekiru Onna, and I'm wondering how much money I'm gonna los by changing money in America instead of Japan.