5 hours in Tokyo & then the sprint to the finish
So we landed at Narita International Airport at around 6:30 a.m. for the start of our nearly 11-hour layover. Our first immediate impression was just what a delight the airport was compared to the airports in Vietnam we had experienced: Narita was clean, well-lit, not humid, clean, orderly, well laid-out, clean, had lots of easy to read signs, clean...well, you get the picture. We noted that we had to travel to Japan someday because it seems like the "orderly" part of Asia. Frankly, after 3 weeks in Vietnam, we were ready for a helping or two of "orderly".
We cleared immigration, cleaned ourselves up, and stopped at the information desk to learn how to get into Tokyo city center, which is about 40 miles away from the airport. We had attempted to check in for our United flight, but the United ticket counters were not yet open, and by 8:15 we had decided we would head into the city first, then return a couple hours prior to our flight to check in.
We got phenomenal assistance (in perfect English, no less) from the tourism agent, exchanged some $USD for yen, stowed our carry-on baggage in a locker, purchased our round trip ticket on the train, and hopped on the express train into Tokyo where we arrived about an hour+ later at Tokyo Station. Tokyo Station is the main transit point for the city - numerous subway and bus lines converge there - it was massive...literally a hive of activity, shops, restaurants, and people moving every where; we had to escalate literally 5 levels from where our train came in to the main exit at street level. On each level were more shops and lots of people hurriedly moving about.
We finally got to street level, left the station, and promptly couldn't figure out how to get where we wanted to go - which was to the Ginza district (the toney shopping district). We stopped at a bus stop to ask either of 2 women, and neither of them could speak English. An elderly man ambled up to us, looked at our map with the circled area, took our map and motioned for us to follow him. He led us through a veritable 20-minute maze of underground crosswalks and intersections until we arrived at our destination - of course, the whole time I'm thinking he's a judo expert who's leading us into a trap or is going to ask us to buy him lunch for helping (I'm the perfect yin to Michelle's yang as a traveler). However, as soon as he got us to the doorstep of the 1st store we had sought, he handed us back our map, bowed, wished us a good trip, and circled back to return to his original destination. He was such a helpful person to us - without him, we would have gotten lost in yet another Asian city for sure. And he asked for nothing in return, despite my worst inclinations during the entire walk.
We arrived at the 1st store Ito-Yo, a speciality paper store, at 10:20 - which was 10 minutes before it opened. We were invited in to sit in some chairs, and offered some jasmine green tea to drink. It already felt good at that point.
We shopped a bit more, ate sushi lunch, had some cake/pastries, and generally people-watched on what was the equivalent to Chicago's Magnificent Mile (and since there were no global chain stores on the main street, it actually seemed nicer than that). Of course, compared to all the extremely fasionably-dressed locals in the Ginza district, we looked like schleps from our overnight flight in our wrinkled travel clothes and sneakers...but we had little choice - and besides, we're always happy to confirm stereotypes that other people have about Americans. We headed back to the station to catch the 2:00 Express back to the airport so we could check in.
When we arrived back at the airport, we proceeded to the United counter to check in. It was at this point we felt like we had been kicked in the stomachs because the United rep informed us that they had no reservation or flight record for us on any United flight leaving Narita at any time that day. We gave them every piece of paper we had to show that KAL had changed our routing, and they still had nothing in their system. They laid out our options and the best one was to try to fly stand-by on the 5:30 flight we thought we had been confirmed onto. However, all their flights leaving Narita that day were sold out - and most were oversold; they told us that it was possible that only 1 of us would get out today. We were placed on the stand-by list, instructed to hang out near the check-in counter, and to check back at 4:30 when the flight should be closed for boarding. Our minds were racing as fast as our hopes were disappearing. All the good energy we had amassed during the trip to Tokyo - the seeming flawlessness of our plans - seemed to evaporate.
A nervous 45 minutes passed (okay - admittedly, Michelle handled it much better than I did...I was just so deflated and feeling that all the good karma we had experienced during the day in Tokyo City had used up our allotment). During that time, we determined our contingency plans since we knew we would have to decide immediately at 4;30 what we would do. We agreed that we would take any seat on the plan - even a middle seat trapped between two sumo wrestlers, if needed. We decided that if only 1 of us could get out, we should take at least that and get one of us stateside. We agreed to pursue reimbursement for any additional nights stay in Japan from KAL should we need it. And finally, we agreed that Michelle would stay behind if we needed to separate.
At this point, it's worth noting that Michelle has been snake-bitten while traveling thru Narita. On two separate return trips from Asia via Narita (one from Hong Kong and one from Thailand), she has missed connections and been required to fly out a day later than planned, and been re-routed as part of the experience. It appeared likely that we would be facing the same outcome yet again. Which, indeed, was part of the reason we had liked the original itinerary that routed us thru Seoul/Incheon and enabled us to avoid Narita.
At 4:20 went back to the counter. It was a bit earlier than they instructed us for one main reason: they had already told us that, at best, we would have 45 minutes to get from check-in thru immigration, customs and security and to get all the way to our gate which was at the far end of the terminal. They made it clear that 45 minutes was possibly not enough time, so that even if we got ticketed at the United check-in counter, we could miss the flight if we got delayed at any of those chokepoints. (Again, I'm thinking the odds were against us.) United was unable to confirm seats for us at that time, but did tell us it "looked good" and gave us forms to get beyond the security checkpoints without boarding passes. They told us to "hurry" to the gate to try to check in there. We bolted on our mission.
We paced a steady clip, slalomed through the maze of people who were in our way, and made it thru all the checkpoints and got to the gate in about 25 minutes at 4:50, slightly out of breath and definitely sweating. We checked in at the gate, and they had confirmed seats for us - next to one another and in the Economy Plus section to boot (which meant 3 inches more legroom than the rest of coach). It appeared that the travel gods were smiling on us. We ran quickly to get some bottled water, grabbed a bite to eat on the flight now that our stomachs could actually accept food - and then returned to board the plane immediately. Our luck continued when we got on the plane because we were assigned 2 interior seats in a 5-seat row, but someone actually wanted to trade with us, so we got an aisle and the next seat in.
It was at that point, we sighed deeply - knew our travel adventures were behind us, and felt such huge relief at seeing the little map on the display console showing the flight route ending in "Seattle", where we would arrive less than 9 hours later. We departed Narita at on time at 5:30 p.m Saturday local time and arrived in Seattle at 8:30 a.m. Saturday PT. The long journey over - and given what we had just been through in the final 28 hours or so, it felt like the trip to Vietnam had been days ago.
We've had fun keeping you all up to date...blogging sure beats sending postcards!! We'll post some photos this weekend now that we finally have a reliable USB connection and share with you some of the visuals from the trip. Travel snafus and all other annoyances aside, this was a wonderful trip - and Vietnam is definitely worth a trip if you're at all considering it. We'd be happy to help any of you (or your friends/relatives) who are planning a trip there - just e-mail one of us.
Happy to be at home typing this...Dorothy was right, "There's no place like home".
We cleared immigration, cleaned ourselves up, and stopped at the information desk to learn how to get into Tokyo city center, which is about 40 miles away from the airport. We had attempted to check in for our United flight, but the United ticket counters were not yet open, and by 8:15 we had decided we would head into the city first, then return a couple hours prior to our flight to check in.
We got phenomenal assistance (in perfect English, no less) from the tourism agent, exchanged some $USD for yen, stowed our carry-on baggage in a locker, purchased our round trip ticket on the train, and hopped on the express train into Tokyo where we arrived about an hour+ later at Tokyo Station. Tokyo Station is the main transit point for the city - numerous subway and bus lines converge there - it was massive...literally a hive of activity, shops, restaurants, and people moving every where; we had to escalate literally 5 levels from where our train came in to the main exit at street level. On each level were more shops and lots of people hurriedly moving about.
We finally got to street level, left the station, and promptly couldn't figure out how to get where we wanted to go - which was to the Ginza district (the toney shopping district). We stopped at a bus stop to ask either of 2 women, and neither of them could speak English. An elderly man ambled up to us, looked at our map with the circled area, took our map and motioned for us to follow him. He led us through a veritable 20-minute maze of underground crosswalks and intersections until we arrived at our destination - of course, the whole time I'm thinking he's a judo expert who's leading us into a trap or is going to ask us to buy him lunch for helping (I'm the perfect yin to Michelle's yang as a traveler). However, as soon as he got us to the doorstep of the 1st store we had sought, he handed us back our map, bowed, wished us a good trip, and circled back to return to his original destination. He was such a helpful person to us - without him, we would have gotten lost in yet another Asian city for sure. And he asked for nothing in return, despite my worst inclinations during the entire walk.
We arrived at the 1st store Ito-Yo, a speciality paper store, at 10:20 - which was 10 minutes before it opened. We were invited in to sit in some chairs, and offered some jasmine green tea to drink. It already felt good at that point.
We shopped a bit more, ate sushi lunch, had some cake/pastries, and generally people-watched on what was the equivalent to Chicago's Magnificent Mile (and since there were no global chain stores on the main street, it actually seemed nicer than that). Of course, compared to all the extremely fasionably-dressed locals in the Ginza district, we looked like schleps from our overnight flight in our wrinkled travel clothes and sneakers...but we had little choice - and besides, we're always happy to confirm stereotypes that other people have about Americans. We headed back to the station to catch the 2:00 Express back to the airport so we could check in.
When we arrived back at the airport, we proceeded to the United counter to check in. It was at this point we felt like we had been kicked in the stomachs because the United rep informed us that they had no reservation or flight record for us on any United flight leaving Narita at any time that day. We gave them every piece of paper we had to show that KAL had changed our routing, and they still had nothing in their system. They laid out our options and the best one was to try to fly stand-by on the 5:30 flight we thought we had been confirmed onto. However, all their flights leaving Narita that day were sold out - and most were oversold; they told us that it was possible that only 1 of us would get out today. We were placed on the stand-by list, instructed to hang out near the check-in counter, and to check back at 4:30 when the flight should be closed for boarding. Our minds were racing as fast as our hopes were disappearing. All the good energy we had amassed during the trip to Tokyo - the seeming flawlessness of our plans - seemed to evaporate.
A nervous 45 minutes passed (okay - admittedly, Michelle handled it much better than I did...I was just so deflated and feeling that all the good karma we had experienced during the day in Tokyo City had used up our allotment). During that time, we determined our contingency plans since we knew we would have to decide immediately at 4;30 what we would do. We agreed that we would take any seat on the plan - even a middle seat trapped between two sumo wrestlers, if needed. We decided that if only 1 of us could get out, we should take at least that and get one of us stateside. We agreed to pursue reimbursement for any additional nights stay in Japan from KAL should we need it. And finally, we agreed that Michelle would stay behind if we needed to separate.
At this point, it's worth noting that Michelle has been snake-bitten while traveling thru Narita. On two separate return trips from Asia via Narita (one from Hong Kong and one from Thailand), she has missed connections and been required to fly out a day later than planned, and been re-routed as part of the experience. It appeared likely that we would be facing the same outcome yet again. Which, indeed, was part of the reason we had liked the original itinerary that routed us thru Seoul/Incheon and enabled us to avoid Narita.
At 4:20 went back to the counter. It was a bit earlier than they instructed us for one main reason: they had already told us that, at best, we would have 45 minutes to get from check-in thru immigration, customs and security and to get all the way to our gate which was at the far end of the terminal. They made it clear that 45 minutes was possibly not enough time, so that even if we got ticketed at the United check-in counter, we could miss the flight if we got delayed at any of those chokepoints. (Again, I'm thinking the odds were against us.) United was unable to confirm seats for us at that time, but did tell us it "looked good" and gave us forms to get beyond the security checkpoints without boarding passes. They told us to "hurry" to the gate to try to check in there. We bolted on our mission.
We paced a steady clip, slalomed through the maze of people who were in our way, and made it thru all the checkpoints and got to the gate in about 25 minutes at 4:50, slightly out of breath and definitely sweating. We checked in at the gate, and they had confirmed seats for us - next to one another and in the Economy Plus section to boot (which meant 3 inches more legroom than the rest of coach). It appeared that the travel gods were smiling on us. We ran quickly to get some bottled water, grabbed a bite to eat on the flight now that our stomachs could actually accept food - and then returned to board the plane immediately. Our luck continued when we got on the plane because we were assigned 2 interior seats in a 5-seat row, but someone actually wanted to trade with us, so we got an aisle and the next seat in.
It was at that point, we sighed deeply - knew our travel adventures were behind us, and felt such huge relief at seeing the little map on the display console showing the flight route ending in "Seattle", where we would arrive less than 9 hours later. We departed Narita at on time at 5:30 p.m Saturday local time and arrived in Seattle at 8:30 a.m. Saturday PT. The long journey over - and given what we had just been through in the final 28 hours or so, it felt like the trip to Vietnam had been days ago.
We've had fun keeping you all up to date...blogging sure beats sending postcards!! We'll post some photos this weekend now that we finally have a reliable USB connection and share with you some of the visuals from the trip. Travel snafus and all other annoyances aside, this was a wonderful trip - and Vietnam is definitely worth a trip if you're at all considering it. We'd be happy to help any of you (or your friends/relatives) who are planning a trip there - just e-mail one of us.
Happy to be at home typing this...Dorothy was right, "There's no place like home".
posted by ToddV at
2:35 AM
