Going Back Home

Of the five hotels we stayed at, four required that we check out by 10am.  We really could have used an extra hour at the hotel this morning for packing and resting up for the nine hour flight.  Today, we left Tokyo; but not before we explored the Imperial Palace gardens.

View from the hotel room

We checked out of the hotel right at ten, having been warned of an automatic fee for staying past.  The Grand Arc Hanzoman Hotel was located very near the Imperial Palace, so we saved that destination for last.  We basically crossed the street and arrived at the park surrounding the palace.

Like the palace in Kyoto, the Tokyo palace was unseeable and untouchable.  The gardens, however, were available for pulbic use.  Dozens of runners were using the patch circling the palace.  The palace is ringed by parkland and the gardens are east of the palace and behind the watchful eye of a guard.

Imperial Palace parkland in Tokyo.

One of the problems with visiting Japan in the winter is that none of the gardens are very attractive; none of the flowers are in bloom and most of the trees have lost their leaves.  Despite this emptiness, the gardens still held some surprises, including the base of a castle destroyed centuries ago and never rebuilt and a bansho (or samurai guardhouse) where we heard the grunts and groans of what sounded like a martial arts class.

Base of a castle destroyed long ago

Moat around palace with city in the background

We exited the gardens by the east gate.  The next order of business was food.  We hadn't eaten breakfast, and it was already noon.  We managed to find an Italian trattoria popular with the lunch crowd from the nearby high rise office buildings.  They vegetarianized one of the four meaty pasta dishes on their menu for me.

We finished our meal and hopped  on the metro (we had managed to walk three stops from our hotel).  We got back to our hotel, grabbed our bags, and hopped back on the metro to get to the train station to take the reserve only Narita Express to the airport.

We managed to make it to the airport, check in for our flights, return our Suica (metro) cards and the phone we rented, and say our goodbyes.  We were not flying on the same plane; Greg's ticket was purchased by his company and we couldn't afford a ticket for me on the same flight.

My return flight wasn't nearly as horrible as the flight there.  One of the first things I told Greg when I arrived in Japan is that I would have to stay there forever because I couldn't take another flight like that.  But I survived.  Perhaps the flight was bearable in part because of the interesting Canadian couple seated next to me.  The girl cried, then stopped, then cried, and then the boy cried.  I didn't get it because I couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but the drama did make my journey more enjoyable.  I spent much of the flight speculating about what was going on.  I have no definite conclusion.

Greg and I met up at the airport (our flights left and arrived 30 minutes apart).  We boarded the train at the airport.  He got off in Burlingame to go to work and I went home.  Home, sweet home.