Day 20: Home time today :(

After checking out just before 11am we went into Tokyo station to explore the Tokyo Station city! We went down ramen street and had lunch, character street to see all the cool little tv show shops and sweet street where we watched a guy making candy and I bought some. Mmmmmm candy.

Then we organised our Narita Express tickets to go out to the airport from Tokyo which takes about an hour. It stops at our terminal (kinda like heathrow airport) so is nice and easy to use.

Back to the hotel at 2pm and then the fun and glorious task of dragging two backpacks, a snowboard bag and a giant (now partly broken) suitcase through the main station. I think we did much better this time! I didn’t punch anyone but I did annoy lots of people on escalators with the suitcase. The Narita Express is pretty groovy, it has funky seats that recline and a menu to order off:

Arriving at Narita airport nice and early for QF22 direct into Sydney we discovered qantas SUCK and don’t open check in until 2.5hrs before boarding time! Bloody ridiculous. So cookies and gross star bucks coffee it is rather than delicious lounge food in qantas club 😦

I think a special mention here needs to go to my boots. These boots (planet shoes brand from Melbourne) are the only pair of shoes I brought over and I’ve worn them day in and day out. They have been warm, waterproof and comfortable the entire trip! They also survived snow almost to the tops of the boots. Plus they have a raised instep for arch support and the base is inset to avoid slipping (although on ice it is kind of unavoidable). Hi-5 boots! You have been awesome and I will miss you in the return to Australian summer.

Tomorrow I will do a final blog post when we are home (well, back in
Canberra anyway) safe and sound. For now I will go back to glaring at qantas staff and hoping they open the check in early o.O