May 2 - They Finally Arrive!

Well I do not know if I am allowed to post this on my blog or not, but I will be keeping a journal in word for the time being. Hopefully at some later date in the future I can upload all of this.

Friday was just a normal day at class. When I left the house my father handed me two extra umbrellas for my parents when they arrived. Thanks tosan. Now I get to carry three umbrellas all day. Japanese class was boring as usual and of course my teacher asked about my three umbrellas. My next class was cancelled because of Golden Week, but the professor failed to inform anybody. Steve and I showed up per usual, but when the prof was a no-show, we quickly left. It was lame because I had a couple of hours to kill before heading up to the airport. I accompanied Steve on some errands which eventually led us to a pool parlor near Baba station. Steve is as terrible at pool as I am. As so, it we spent the entire hour playing only two games (with Shueng Shueng we got in four.) It was 3pm when we went our different ways. My parents were scheduled to arrive at 4:20 (heh)

I should have just gone to the airport right then.

Instead I figured that it would be good to figure out where the hostel was that my parents were staying at. I had the address and knew it was a single station away from Shinjuku on the Toei-Shinjuku line. Since I can get to Shinjuku for free, I decided to walk it. Bad idea. It took me over an hour to figure out which direction it was and then walk all the way there. It was much further than I had anticipated. I did find the place however, and got on the train to the airport. By this time it was 4pm. Now I knew that it would take an hour to get to the airport meaning I would be late. Oops. So I got to the airport around 5, went to the arrivals, and saw nothing familiar. “Well this can’t be right,” I thought. I walked around a bit and finally realized that I was in the domestic flight area. Where is the international flights? After finally asking someone, I found out that international flights are in Airport Terminal 1. I was in Airport Terminal 2. Really? It is about a 5 minute train ride between them. I took the free shuttle and finally made it there at 5:30.

I ran into my mom and dad almost right away. The first things I heard out of their mouths were “there he is! I knew you would come before midnight!” Yeah. Sorry about being so late. They were each carrying two huge luggage bags that were half empty. I get to send some of my stuff home with them. Anyway, we went down to the subways and started our journey to Tokyo.

We talked on the way home. It was a mindnumbingly long 2 hour ride back to Tokyo. It pretty much sucks if you just got off a 13 hour plane ride. Then we had to drag the 4 luggage cases up and down a couple of flights of stairs in Shinjuku. The path to the hostel involved taking the Toei-Shinjuku line which apparently doesn’t believe in escalators for all of their steps. I ended up carrying my mom’s heavy bag and she held mine. We made it to the hostel rather easily. It had to have been around 9pm by the time we got checked in and everything situated.

The hostel is a lot like a capsule hotel. Check in is on the bottom. The showers are in the basement. There are also computers with internet on the first floor. Then there are 4 floors of capsules, each with 24 or so. The only problem is that the room is much louder than the capsule hotel I stayed at. There must not have been all the sound-absorbing equipment. Other than that, it is a really cheap place to stay.