Where Is Joey Today?

Just plane dumb

So after a surprisingly decent night in my very own morgue, I got up around 7 and headed to Sakura to pick up Em, shower and update my blog (I was finishing up my Hiroshima post). By 9:30 I began to wonder and had the front desk call her room (yes, Sakura has phones in the room... not bad for a hostel). Apparently the alarm clock decided to run out of juice around 1am.

So like yesterday we were getting a late start. On the list of to dos were to visit Akihabara to look for Joe's requests (maracas and toy) and Dad's souvenir. With our flight at 4p, we backed out two hours for checking in, and an hour for the train to the airport. If my math serves that is 1p.

That leaves two hours to do all of this. Hmm...well worst comes to worst, we probably can squeeze down the two hours a little. From experience I knew that the international flights at times will shutdown the baggage conveyor around 45 minutes before takeoff. So it would be wise not to push it.

Akihabara is fairly easy to get to, just take the Ginza to Ginza the Hibya to Akihabara. If any place would have Maracas controllers for Dreamcast this would be it. Interestingly, every shop knew EXACTLY what this Samba de Amigo maracas were only no one knew where to buy it. We finally settled on the 10 story electronics haven known as Yodabashi Camera. Still no maracas but they did have a toy section. Apparently there is a fairly famous Japanese tv show with a fairly famous character with the unfortunate name of harudogei (pronounced Hardo Gay). Each person on the toy floor knew about this also "Ahh yesss hardoo gay no it does not exist here". Sorry, Joe, we tried.

So with time ticking away we were at the 1:15 mark. Later than I had hoped but still doing okay. It was time to book it to the hostel again. It took about 30 minutes to get back due to the lunch rush hour. Back to backwards math. 4p - 20 minutes to get to and from the hostel minus an hour train minus 30 minutes and we are looking at the current time, meaning in order to beat that 45 minute cutoff we would have to run, to beat an hour cutoff we would have to pray.

Having never been in a hurry during the day I underestimated how long it would take to navigate the souvenir shops stretching from Kaminarmon gate to Sensoji. We knocked into half of Tokyo on the way to the subway while we yelled "Sumimasen!"constantly. We even bumped into a French woman on the train who gave us a fairly disgusted look and asked us where we were from. Em and I in unison said "Canada". I added in "Tranta" for a little something extra.

Em and I nearly threw up from running with packs on and by the time we caught the metro to Ueno, bought our ticket and walked the long corridor to the Keisei line our only hope was for a delayed flight or to fly some other way. Japanese punctuality was offset by their cleanliness obsession as that prevented us from taking off early. We took the 2:40 train putting us at check in 5 minutes before take off. At this point I was resigned to missing the flight but was not looking forward to the inevitable question "Why, again did you miss the flight?" "::sigh:: we were looking for a Hardo Gay toy"

Unfortunately for us the flight was on time. Very fortunate for us there was a flight in 25 minutes to Newark...that had also stopped check in.

Continental rocks. If you ever have a choice in airline and the price is pretty close, pick em. The lady reopens the baggage line and tags our packs while throwing out requests to other employees to help us find our gate. We were literally walked from the counter the gate to make sure we would make the flight all with no extra charge for the new tickets. As in Amsterdam a year earlier, Em and I heard our names over the intercom for the final boarding call. The security check was a bit haphazard and again the staff asked us if they could check our baggage. We may have lost our aisle seats for that flight but we felt very happy to have made it aboard. The 11 hour flight mostly zipped by and before we knew it we were touching down in the big apple. At customs we were greeted with this New York accent yelling, ¨Hey YOU! You... you get ova´here."

I missed Japan already.

We had some time to kill in Newark (5 hour layover), so we found a bar serving Brooklyn Breweries' line up (I found the IPA to be just ok) and a Borders mini where I looked at some guidebooks for my next trip to China next year.

Having been up for about 30 hours we got 8 hours sleep in some very comfortable beds.

I will post a few more pictures, a wrapup, and a youth hostel supplement over the next few days.

Until next time,

Joey