I woke up quite a while before even the first of my alarms started ringing, at around 06:00. I quickly put my laptop away after getting up and began getting ready to check out and leave for the train station. Some fifteen minutes later, I was ready to go and went ahead and double checked that all of my stuff had been packed up before going out and checking out.
There was one thing that I left back at that hostel locker: my lucky umbrella. We had a good month together, but it just had to come to an end at some point. Hopefully someone makes use of it rather than throwing it away.
The walk through Iriya (入谷) and Ueno (上野) was pretty quiet and uneventful in the early morning. It still seems quite weird to me that such a large city, a metropolis, can be so quiet. With the walk to the station done, I headed to the ticket machines.
A moment of looking at the map above the ticket machines found me the destination, Tokyo station (東京駅). I put in the money and selected the ticket. I take my change quite slowly – for some weird reason – and I soon noticed that the ticket was sucked back in to the machine, and the machine told me to wait for a staff member. A short period of cursing later, a hatch opened just by the ticket machine; behind that hatch was a man. The man then asked if I was having some problems, and a brief explanation later, he gave me my ticket back so that I can get moving.
The semi-crowded train ride to the other station lasted for just a few minutes. Now that I was finally there, I could get myself a NEX (Narita Express) ticket. I was a little bit worried since I had no more bills with me, but the ticket machine thankfully accepted credit cards. I got my ticket and went to wait for the next train to the airport.
The boarding for the NEX happened in an underground platform. Before the train arrived, I decided to buy myself a last bottle of Pocari Sweat – it was worth the 150 yen.
The NEX arrived in two parts, the first of which arrived a few minutes before the second one. With the two parts combined in to a super train, I finally got to board it. I had gotten myself a window seat, so I could just sleep the entire train ride – so I did.
I woke up as the train was reaching it’s last stop, Narita Airport (成田空港) Terminal 1. This is where I realised that I had actually bought the ticket for Terminal 2, and started to get a little bit worried whether or not they’d actually let me past the gates. I got out and started walking towards the gates.
On my way to the gates, I wondered how I should explain myself. “Should I go with the dumb foreigner routine?” is one of the options I thought. When I got to the gate and put my ticket there, it clearly told me that I couldn’t pass, and as I was about to give my explanation to the lady by the gate, she just took the ticket and told me to go – so I did. Everything went better than I expected.
Another annoying thought came to my mind: “Wait, does my flight even leave from this terminal?” I went to the departures board and noticed that I had lucked out with my screw up; the flight was leaving from this terminal. Everything went much better than I had expected. With the worrying out of the way, I went to get myself some breakfast before starting to look for more souvenirs – even though I did say to everyone that I wouldn’t buy souvenirs after my cash ran out.
I had some pork dumplings and a cup of coffee for breakfast. With the breakfast out of the way, I started looking for more souvenirs, but keeping an eye out for Kit Kats in specific; I needed to get more so that I could have a wider range of tastes to give out to people. After having spent about an hour looking for (and finding) things, I decided to start heading to the check in.
I got to the check in and put my suitcase on to the conveyor belt, but the lady at the desk asked if I had some of the listed objects in it. I knew that there was one particular object that was there, so I removed it and passed it over to her again. She then handed over my boarding pass and I was on my way to go through the other procedures before boarding the plane.
The security check was nothing out of the ordinary, and the walk through the immigration section went without any issues. From there on out it was just waiting for the plane and boarding it.
During the flight to Copenhagen, I watched a couple of movies, one of which was The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared – gotta love the long title. The movie was surprisingly good. Besides that, I played some Civilization III. Also, I must’ve spent a good while just writhing in pain on my seat – I didn’t get off the seat for the entirety of the flight.
The moment we landed and I got to get out of the plane was just the best thing in the world. My joy was soon crushed by the security check and the tight schedule for catching my connecting flight. I got through security check eventually, but the wait wasn’t without a good bunch of swearing. I still had some thirty minutes until the flight would leave, so I had a lot more time than I had thought.
The second flight wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the first one, but I was very, VERY annoyed by the fact that I hadn’t been able to fall asleep on either of the flights. When I got off the plane and finally got my suitcase back, I headed for the exit.
Nothing happened on my way to the buses, nor on the bus itself, so my ride to O’Connell Street was quite pleasant. When my stop came by, I got out and went to get myself something to eat… so of course I went to a Burger King – I need to stop this, argh!
With that done and my Leap card three euros in the negative, I had to pay for my bus ride home with cash – I, of course, overpaid because I never have exact change.
After having gotten home, I took out my stuff and – you guessed it – started procrastinating until 01:00 AM.
This is how the final day ended, and as much as I truly enjoyed my travels, it’s just good to be home.
Withdrew: 0,000 円
Spent: 5,834 円
Cash spendings: 1,130 円
Remaining cash: 0,265 円
2 円 disappeared when I dug for bus fare.
Breakdown:
VM – 0,150 円
Train to Tokyo station – 0,160 円
NEX – 3,220 円
Breakfast – 0,820 円
KeypointDrug souvenirs – 0,864 円
Cospa souvenirs – 1,620 円
TOTAL SPENDINGS: 265,040円
TRANSLATES ROUGHLY TO: 1879.70 €