Today was my last day in Japan for a while.<\/p>\n
I rolled out of bed, had the hotel buffet, and got back to packing.<\/p>\n
I wanted to go by Sekaidou one more time, because I want to get my dad one of the pens that I got at Itoya, but they only had the regular version in black. I think he’ll like it anyway. Pilot makes great pens. I also loaded up on refills, because I have no idea how that’s going to work in the US.<\/p>\n
On the way back to the hotel, I stopped by the ticket machine at JR Shinjuku and bought a green car ticket to Narita on the N’EX. Yes, it’s pricey, at 4400 yen, but the green car on the N’EX is worth every penny, and I wanted a little luxury before I got crammed into coach. (Ugh.)<\/p>\n
When I got to the airport, I had to do a lot of security dancing just to get in.<\/p>\n
I went to the counter to do the automated check-in, and the machine presented me with an interesting proposition. “Would you like to upgrade to Business Class for 50,000 yen?”<\/p>\n
Hell yes I would!<\/p>\n
Okay, I know it’s a lot of money in today’s economy, but what a coincidence– I had 50,000 yen I didn’t spend on a Vita.<\/p>\n
I flew over in business class, and landed feeling almost human. You bet I’m going to take advantage of it on the way back!<\/p>\n
I stopped in the Admiral’s Club and spent a few hours chilling out, mentally preparing myself for the long flight back. I understand that it’s perfectly safe, it’s just that when I’m traveling, I like to stop the car and get out every now and then and stretch. You can’t do that on a plane. Even if you do, they always send you back to your seat. Boo.<\/p>\n
Honestly, I would prefer it if airplanes had gyms in them. That would help me take my mind off of a lot of things, and leave me refreshed when the flight was over.<\/p>\n
The flight back to Dallas was uneventful. I made it through customs okay, and then went to the Admiral’s Club to de-stress and wait for my 8:00 flight back to RDU.<\/p>\n
Another uneventful flight, and I was back in RDU at around 11. I didn’t get to bed until 3 a.m., and my internal clock is totally out of whack now. Tomorrow (today?) I have to drive to Asheville for Christmas!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I did a little shopping today before getting on the Narita Express and heading to the airport. I managed to get a business class upgrade for relatively cheap (yay), and made it safely back home to RDU. Tomorrow I have to drive 250 miles to Asheville. Whee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[42,40,894,828,647,493,350,329,302],"class_list":["post-1192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan-trip","category-travel","tag-admirals-club","tag-american-airlines","tag-japan-trip","tag-japan2011","tag-jr-shinjuku","tag-narita","tag-narita-express","tag-sekaido","tag-shinjuku","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1193,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions\/1193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}