Left our hotel for the festival's bus pickup at 9:30 AM Monday, I was unnecessarily worried that we'd get stuck in a massive bus line and be late for the train. I was one of the last people on the bus so had to stand. Normally wouldn't be a problem, except there were so many tight bends. Got to the train station by 10:30 AM, with the train due to leave at 12:00 PM - oh well. The town of Yuzawa is a little bigger than Naeba but not by much, so wasn't a whole lot to see and do there.
Train made it to Tokyo shortly after 1:30PM so had two hours to collect our other bags and look around for a bit, about the right amount of time I thought. My shoes were so muddy and beat up I thought I'd try and get a new pair for the trip home. So where's a good place to go to get shoes ? Akiba Electric Town ? Yes that's what I thought too, but I didn't find one of the ABC Mart shoe stores that were everywhere (except when I needed one). I knew where some were in other parts of Tokyo, just not nearby. So I gave up on that pretty quickly - since carrying around a suitcase in the middle of a hot, sunny afternoon is no fun.
Just had a look around Tokyo station instead, and found a frozen yoghurt store! and unloaded another batch of coins on them!! I still failed the challenge though.
The express train to the airport was about 10 minutes late, and then stopped for a while just before arrival! First time there's been any significant delay with the trains, but then I have no idea what kind of schedule any of the local ones were operating on - just turn up and within 5 minutes a train is there, it really was that easy.
The plane for the Gold Coast wasn't until 8:00 PM so we had a few hours to kill in Narita Airport. It's alright as far as airports go, unfortunately after I'd already had something to eat I found a McDonalds selling cinnamelts! First frozen yoghurt and now cinnamelts, it's like I'm in the USA. I must have been tired because I wasn't paying attention and bought two Vitamin Waters BEFORE going through security. So I had to sit down and drink one litre of vitamins in five minutes. While I was doing that and repacking my carry-on suitcase the Japanese police on patrol must have thought I was acting suspicious, so they had a sit down with me and asked some questions. Thankfully one of the two could speak enough English that I could address their concerns and they were on their way.
The flight itself was all kinds of leg pain and discomfort, I'd say between 8:00 PM and 6:00 AM I got less than half an hour of sleep. Being the middle of the night I didn't really feel like reading (so I've completed the trip without evening opening my heavy-as-hell hardcover book - I really would like to know what I was thinking when I packed that) or using a computer, so it was several hours more of staring at upholstery. I think I need to buy a DS before my next trip, just not sure if I'd use it at any other time.
Gold Coast were pretty understaffed for customs, so that took a while. I had to declare some snacks and my old, muddy shoes, but they were both cleared in seconds which was good. Due to lack of passengers our connecting flight had been moved back a few hours, so we had to wait until 11:00 AM to leave for Melbourne. That was bad since there's absolutely nothing to do at Gold Coast airport. Add to that check-in only opens around 9:00 AM and it was only 6:00 AM, we couldn't even go out for a few hours for some surfing (or something), just had to sit around with all of our bags.
So the flight finally came and went, and 29 hours later I was back in Melbourne at last.
So to summarise in point form, good things about Japan:
- It was summer
- It wasn't winter
- Japanese girls
- Efficient and accessible public transportation
- Lots of vending machines & convenience stores
- Big cities (and lots of districts - not one crappy, centrally located city)
- Azuki
- Low theft rate
- Fanta (Grape, USA Hip Hop, Waikiki Hula)
And the things that weren't so good:
- Quite expensive (hotels and trains in particular)
- Vending machines ONLY sell drinks (and beer)
- Smoking is more acceptable
- Not enough English
- No supermarkets
- Stores don't open until late (but do stay open later)
- Free To Air TV pretty crap
- Not many rubbish and recycling bins
- Narrow aisles in stores
- Loud salespeople outside every store
- Fanta (Cola with Orange)
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