Tokyo ’12, Day 11 – The Journey Home

The alarm went off around 5 am, so early! I had a lot of trouble waking up. >_< We showered, got dressed and went to check every corner of the room to see if everything we wanted to bring back with us had been packed. Then my mom and I left the room with our suitcases, while my dad did the last thorough check. After that my dad joined us and we made our way to the elevators, saying goodbye to our hallway. The hotel was completely quiet. We waited in the hall until our bus would arrive around 6 am. After some time the orange Airport Limousine bus arrived and we handed our luggage to the driver.

The Friendly Airport Limousine bus that would take us to the airport.
The bus was empty, so we could choose any place we wanted to sit. We decided to sit at the front. After a while, the bus driver sat down behind the wheel and we drove off, leaving our hotel behind.
The bus drove all around Shinjuku to pick up passengers. The first hotel we passed was the Shinjuku Park Hyatt, the hotel from ‘Lost in Translation’. At every hotel we waited for passengers and then continued our way. We were (quite negatively) surprised when we waited outside the Hilton hotel. Such a famous and expensive hotel, yet we had to wait for ages until we could leave because a certain form had to be signed! Oh well. Finally we went on our way to Narita Airport.
The route the bus drove was the same as the bus my dad and I had taken back to the airport on our previous trip to Tokyo. We past the clock, drove for a long time and then we went over the Rainbow Bridge (we could see the Skytree!), past Odaiba and Disneyland and we saw the IKEA again too! We ate our bread rolls while looking out the window, saying goodbye to Tokyo (and to my lovely Melon bread).
We arrived at the airport, where the passengers for the first terminal left the bus. Then the bus continued its way to terminal two (which was like 200 meters). When we got there, a little line of airport staff members bowed (while the bus pulled over XD) and then pulled out all the luggage from the bus at an incredible speed! Very impressive.
On our previous trip, my dad and I had flown back with Japan Airlines. Now we would fly back with KLM, therefor we had to be in a different terminal. We entered he terminal, where my dad checked us in. We also checked in our luggage (yay, no more dragging suitcases along).

Our flight wasn’t very hard to find, being the only KLM one. XD
We checked the details of our flight and then went through passport check. We arrived at the (official) airport, but I must say it was quite boring. Everything was grey and quite quiet. Luckily there were some shops we browsed. I found a book store that sold a book I loved as a child, but then of course in Japanese! Very cute. I bought a KERA magazine at that store.
My mom and dad got some coffee at a McDonald’s. We initially wanted to eat something, but apparently the pin device was broken and we only had some coins left. So coffee it was.
We walked around for a while. Through the windows we could see our airplane already. It was so big!
We passed a souvenir shop called Tax free Asakusa and my mom went inside. They had really nice (and cheesy, haha) souvenirs, including a lot of key chains. My mom said: ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if they sold the little lantern key chains here you’ve been looking for all this time?’ And can you believe it? They did sell them! I just couldn’t believe my eyes! XD I immediately bought two.

Just to prove the key chains were really there!
I also bought a beautiful black hair clip with flowers on it. After I had paid my mom showed me a really sweet souvenir: a little board with five Japanese girls on it, dressed in kimonos with Japanese things on it like cherry blossom trees and kimonos. She loved it so much I decided to buy it for her!

Mom with her cute souvenir! ♥
My mom also bought some chocolates for the flight. Then it was time to head to our gate, where we waited for a while until we were allowed inside. Around 10:10 am it was time. I felt quite sad while walking through the tunnel to the plane. I was saying goodbye to Japan, hoping to return someday again.
We sat down on our seats: my dad at the window, me in the middle and my mom at the aisle. After a while, the plane was ready for takeoff. We drove to the takeoff strip and the plane made speed and left the ground (*sniff*).
The flight was long, but okay. My mom and dad switched places after a while and mom loved looking out the window, because she could see the beautiful mountains and lakes we passed. I mainly watched movies: Atlantis (I had never seen that one before) and A Knight’s Tale (without subtitles, great for my English, although with a buzzing plane it was a bit hard sometimes). My mom watched the Hunger Games, so we could all talk about it. It also made us read the books after we had gotten back! The chocolates my mom and bought were really good: they had different nice fillings! ♥

The beautiful view!
The downside of the flight were the incredibly annoying people sitting in front of both my parents. They were so terrible: jumping around in their seats, dropping down the back rest without even thinking of the person sitting behind them. The woman in front of my dad constantly demanded attention from the stewardesses! Ugh, I was so lucky I had no one in front of me. Around 12 pm (Japanese time) we received lunch. We all chose Japanese style. We got rice with a nice sauce, a bread roll, salad with some kind of meat in it, vegetable salad and jelly with fruits in it for dessert. It was really nice! Somewhere during the flight we got a cup of water and a cup of yoghurt I believe. Breakfast was less nice: we got some kind of pasta with another bread roll, salad and fruit pieces, but the pasta wasn’t very nice.
After hours and hours of flight, our destination came closer. The plane started to descend and we finally hit the ground, back in our own country around 10 pm (Japanese time).

Our huge plane from the outside.
We followed my dad and went to pick up our suitcases. We could see my grandpa and my brother waiting behind the windows. After a while we saw our suitcases appear, picked them up and left the hall. After passing the doors we could finally hug our family again.
We put our suitcases in my grandpa’s car and he and my mom drove to our house, while my dad, my brother and I went back by train. At home we could finally hug our dogs again too. Even though I missed Japan from the moment the plane left the ground, it was also good to be home. Of course I hope I can return to Japan someday again! It really, really hope so.


This was my last Tokyo post! Thank you all so much for reading about our adventures! I hope you enjoyed them! All of your comments were so nice and they always made me really happy! ♥ Thank you for staying with me~!