Wednesday 1st April
Last day in Japan. The Groove hotel breakfast was, as to be expected, a bit crowded and rushed.
Back to our room on the 29th floor by about 9:00 to stuff all our dirty washing into the two suitcases that are now groaning under the strain! We have to check out by 11:00, and the train to the airport (Narita Express) does not leave Shinjuku station until 12:38, leaving us with a couple of spare hours. We decide that we could just about walk to a small park about 20 minutes away and be back in time to check out by 11:00. Another small complication is that we have to return the wifi hotspot device to the hotel reception when we leave - thus we can use Google Maps to get the park and back, but after that we will have to depend on my 'pigeon brain'. The park, Shinjuku Central Park is, as advertised by Google Maps about 20 minutes away and we managed to reach it fairly easily, without having to panic about getting back to check out.
The park is festooned with cherry blossom. At one end of the park we see, presumably, a bride and bridegroom having their photographs taken under the cherry blossom. It is a rather dull morning and I feel slightly sad for them - but it doesn't seem to be dampening their spirits.
I have been most impressed by the etiquette of using crossings in Japan. Most crossings over anything more that a minor road are controlled by lights - and the Japanese obey them absolutely. When the lights turn green for pedestrians there is a sound a bit like cuckoos that gets progressively higher/faster, the green signals for pedestrians start to flash and at that point it is unwise to attempt the crossing. Some minor roads just have zebra crossings. On our way back to the hotel we had to use a crossing without lights. The rules appears to be that in this case cars etc. always, and I mean always give way to pedestrians. At this particular crossing we were fluffing around as Jo was trying to take a photo of our hotel, re-positioning herself to avoid a lamppost being the focus attention. I was looking to cross the road. A police motorcyclist was waiting for us when a pedal cyclist, not unreasonably, went across the zebra crossing. In an instant the policeman had turned on a loudspeaker and said something to the cyclist, quickly followed by flashing lights as he went in pursuit of the poor cyclist. If he ever reads this, we owe him an apology!
We got back to the hotel well in time to check out and hand back the wifi hotspot. - We are now on our own, and it feels slightly scary - the wifi hotspot really has been fantastically useful. We have just about two hours to kill, with heavy suitcases, before we board the Narita Express for the airport. Having rehearsed the route to the station and gate we need, thankfully we know roughly where we are going. But it's only about a 10 minute walk and we have about 90 minutes. A cup of hot chocolate in the department store above the station whiles away half an hour, but there is no way we can avoid a long wait on the platform. There is one waiting room, which we manage to find and occupy!
The rail journey from Shinjuku to Narita takes about an hour and a quarter and mercifully the train isn't too crowded. The check in queue at the airport is again annoyingly short, so check in, fast-track security and immigration go wonderfully smoothly. Jo attempts to spend our loose change (that amounts to little more than 2,240 yen (about £2.50), but the 'duty free' stores selling Chanel etc. have limited choice for those of us with only £2.50, so we give up and head to the Cathay Pacific lounge. Jo decides to go to the 'washrooms' and after about 10 minutes I begin to wonder if she is alright - she eventually re-appears with tales of having gone into the gents by mistake!
A snack of cheese and biscuits and a glass of red wine for Jo, Champagne for me, settles everyone's equilibrium and we relax to enjoy the hospitality, and peace and quiet of the lounge - in fact it's worryingly empty...
As I look out onto the tarmac of the airport I notice that it's pouring with rain again, and contemplate how lucky we have been with the weather - only travel days have been marred by rain.
The flight to Hong Kong is unremarkable (for a business class flight!), other than we arrive in Hong Kong at least half an hour late. There is some confusion about where we need to go to connect to the flight to London, although we know it is Gate 46 that isn't much help! We eventually find a customer services desk that points us to the end of a long queue. My guess is that had we known where to go we might have reached this when the queue was shorter. We had a similar problem on the way to Japan. There must be a good reason for it, but having passed through security at Tokyo it is doubly annoying to have to do it again - at the very least a fast track for business class would have been nice. All this delay means that we don't have time to use the Cathay Pacific Lounge, but it does mean we don't have long wait to board the aircraft. But the sting in the tail is that having boarded the aircraft there is an intermedial delay before we start moving. I comfort myself that this delay is probably because they're loading luggage from Tokyo.
