The journey to get here was long, much time spent sitting, napping, reading, watching in flight TV, eating (they fed us three times on the 13 hour flight from Toronto to Narita). The heat on the plane was cranked, the flight was packed, so it was not the most comfortable trip.
Once I got off the plane things sped up considerably. It was still too warm and now I was trekking through the airport with my camera bag and back pack. Went through Japan Immigration, customs, and then on to baggage claim which was packed and confusing until I found the tiny (relatively) monitor that listed all the flight baggage carousels. Then I was there and I just had to find Cory. Fortunately, spotting a tall, blonde husband in a crowd of short, dark Asians is not that hard. I saw Cory from afar, though I had to come up behind him and get his attention – apparently spotting a short, red-haired wife is not quite as easy.
We found a bank machine, exchanged our rail pass vouchers and purchased Suica NEX passes, then took the Narita Express to Tokyo Station. Which is huge and was packed, since we landed there at rush hour. People zooming every which way, and us trying to figure out how to get out. Eventually we found our way out and got a taxi to our hotel, the Mercure Ginza. After a shower and change of clothes, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant (we were too tired to try and find anywhere else to go), then pretty much crashed.
Saturday morning I woke up around 5 am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Made it easy to get up and get started on our day around 6. We went down to breakfast in the hotel restaurant and noticed it was snowing – we went from too hot to cold overnight. After breakfast in the hotel we cabbed to Tokyo Station and traveled by train to Kawazu for the last day of the Kawazu Cherry Blossom Festival. It was a busy spot, lots of people there to see the cherry trees in bloom, mainly Asian people. We saw only a handful of other Caucasian types (I counted four to be exact. Not that I was consciously looking, but my gaze would pass over someone as I was walking along and my brain would alert that something was different, then I’d realize: Oh yeah white person). Felt right at home, wandering around taking photos along with everyone else. Close to the ocean it was quite windy and chilly, but it was not so bad away from the shore.
Kawazu is not a big place. We saw the cherry blossoms, the ocean, walked around town a bit and had some snacks. Cory was looking for a place to get soup, but we didn’t see anything until we headed back to the train station and stumbled on a small restaurant right across the street from the station. After soup (huge bowls of it – I barely ate half) we got back on the train. Local train from Kawazu to Ito, Express from Ito to Atami, then Shinkansen from Atami to Tokyo.
We got back around supper time, again to tired to go out anywhere so back to the hotel restaurant, then by 10 I crawled back into bed and passed out.
Woke up shortly after 3 this morning, unfortunately, and didn’t get back to sleep. Finally gave in and got up around 6. Of course, when I want Cory to be a morning person and wake up early, he wants to sleep. We could have had early breakfast and gone out for a walk before checking out, but no, he wants to sleep (I should not complain right? Because next time it might be me that wants to sleep).
It is now 9:40 am, we’ve had breakfast and shortly we will be checking out and starting for Kyoto for the next few days.
