Mercure Narita

November 17, 2009<br><br><br><br>Good evening all!<br><br>Today was another rained out day. We sat in the break room reading, talking and laughing. Mel said on Saturday that he had emailed a friend that we were "three fat guys sitting around eating Japanese snakes!" (what he meant was Japanese snacks &#8211; we all got a kick out of that but I guess you had to be there) So ...

November 13, 2009<br><br><br><br>The past two days have been perfect Santa weather! Cloudy, cool with just a little breeze. Perfect! Yesterday was so fun. I spent the day seeing all sorts of people. It has always been fascinating to watch people and see what they do when they don't know they are being watched! Young couples who are just getting to know each other. Older couples who have love and laughed (or cried) together for many years. Families with kids, and maybe one on the ...

... were drastically changed at 5:00am on Saturday morning. Air Canada's flight reservation system apparently went down the night before, wreaking havoc on a number of flights including ours out of Regina. The flight was canceled and we had to be rerouted based on any available seats. Hana ended up traveling via Calgary and Vancouver and I sacrificed myself by traveling through Toronto. <br><br>I have never done this trip by going through Toronto and I can ...

... 8217;t stepped out of the airport, I can say that that Japan already definitely feels different from China. First of all, instead of rushing in without any control, people actually do queue when they hop on a train in the terminal. Secondly, all the people staying overnight in the airport are constantly being watched by a couple of policemen. Security seems to be a priority here as the policemen also wrote down the ...

... to leave the house). After a while the tranquility of the walk was interuppted by Angus yelling at me to stop. I found a nice (snow covered) bench and waited for him. Soon enough, we were only 500m from the top and starting to meet up with all the "normal" people who decided to take the chair lift up rather than trek it. I laughed when I saw a girl clutching onto her boyfriend as she slid down the snow covered path in heels! I mean really! We passed an Australian group (parents and ...

... s house at like 8ish pm. Japan are two hours behind Sydney time so it felt like 10pm to Amba and I. No Rice Paper Walls - Sorry Mum. We dumped our stuff in a downstairs roomand went upstairs to meet Yumi's elder sister - Megumi - who speaks some English. We watched Japanese Tv shows for a while - and i sang chrissy carols in English. We met Yumi's two "Lassie" dogs - Marble and Cookie - who bark at us everytime we come through the upstairs door. grrrrr. Yumi ...

14 hours on that plane and I'm finally in Japan now, which is just really cute. At least, the airport is. I suspect if I actually went to Tokyo, it would also be amazing. That's for another time, though. I didn't have my camera out on the plane and I should have, but here are pictures here at the airport. I would embed them in the entry, but I'm not writing anything that really needs a visual explanation. Check out the photo album attached to this entry.

... huge beer. Japanese draft beer is better than the stuff we get out of the big cans in the US--not great but made better by the fact that it comes in huge mugs for about 500 yen. The yakitori is phenomenal, although one of the assorted bits was oddly chewy--I dont know what that was. I think it might have been chicken ass--not the butt, I mean the actual anus. The whole thing came to about 2000 yen (that is like 18 bucks ...

... express train and didn't stop at my exit. I finally got off, asked for directions and headed back the right direction. Upon arrival, Mika and her husband picked me up in their brand new BMW. Since, Japan drives on the left side of the street. When I entered the car, I felt like I was in the driver seat - sweet. I remembered to take my shoe off at their home before I was asked too. We exchanged gifts and had a wonderful lunch. I was ...

... night. I stopped by the Sony Center to indulge in their latest technology. It was way too much for my taste. I'm not much of a technology junkie. One observation I made about Ginza is the amount of people, I have never seen that many people in one location all at once. It was almost 11PM and I was very tired so I headed back to my room for the night. Until then, Pedro Subway ticket for all day access $8.60 Zoo admission: $5.50 Lunch: $21.00 for two Starbucks $3.90