day 43! taipei airport, narita airport, takadanobaba

The rest of the night of packing went ok. Finished around 2 or 3am and were expected to be up and ready to leave for the airport at around 5am, so I decided to just stay up the rest of the night blogging.


I woke up about 3 hours later drooling on my arm. :p


So our boy cousin (I hate spelling out his name, I just don't know how to do it) insisted on bringing us to the airport even though 7:20am is really freakin early. >< It was really sweet of him. We would have been ok just taking public transport but in the end, all things considered, it was a bit of a godsend that he'd insisted so hard. :p We had a lot of things, and the handing over of keys and everything was just easier to deal with with him there.


Also on a random side note we discovered two more cockroaches (in the TINY TINY room) on our way out. GOODIE. It's so so great to think that they could have been there the whole time I was there. Or worse, that they had fallen on our heads while we were passed out the day before. Good good good.


So we did make it to the airport in a timely manner, I confirmed that my return ticket to the states had been changed, at the China Airlines counter, and everything went smoothly. We even had time to grab a quick breakfast before our 10:30 flight.

Oh! and we met Bobee. :)

Breakfast was surprisingly good. I got a croissant sandwich aaaannndd it's maybe the closest I've been to western foods all month. :)

The flight was rather uneventful, I pretty much fell asleep right away and was only awaken by a pretty bad in-flight meal. It's only like 3.5 hrs flight time so it passed really quickly. 

Landed!! Welcome to Japan. :)

And again, in customs. :) It was so nice to hear Japanese being spoken. I don't know what it is about Japanese, but I absolutely love the language. Even if I'm at home, and I happen to hear two strangers speaking Japanese, my ears perk up and I start smiling. I just really like it. :)

Took the Narita Express train into Tokyo. Narita is actually quite a ways from the city center, it takes about 1.5 hrs to make it to Tokyo station.

Woot time to go sit on a train for a long time.

Luckily the seats are very nice and cushy. :D

We made it to Shinjuku station (last stop on the Narita Express), and then took the Yamanote line from Shinjuku to our station, Takadanobaba (which is only like 3 stops away). It was a bit of an ordeal dragging huge suitcases onto the train during rush hour but other than a few looks and some anger from an old guy whose foot I ran over (I said sorry!) it was ok. :)


A 20 minute slow dragging of luggage to the apartment, check in, and we were all settled in! Oh pretty funny though, at check in they accidentally gave me a key for room 337 instead of room 237. So I dragged the suitcases up, slid the card key, opened to the door.........to the sight of dirty laundry everywhere, opened cereal boxes, and a boy smell. -_-;;;; I was like what the.....suuuumimaaaasseeeeen T^T *runrunrun* The guy at the front desk met me at the elevator with profuse apologies. lol. The ACTUAL room was fine though. :) They upgraded our room to two twin beds (from one single) at no extra cost so that was pretty awesome. It reminds me of my old dorm room, actually, with the tiny capsule bathroom, but it's actually larger from having space for two people.

After dropping our stuff off, we sort of checked out the area a bit.

Step #1: Find your nearest konbini! (convenient store)

Step #2: Locate the alcohol section of said konbini.

Step #3: Buy all the alcohols! :3

We bought a bunch of chuhai, which is like canned alcoholic beverages that they have at most convenient stores. They're not super tasty and they're pretty low alcohol content but they're cheap(ish) and the best thing to drink at home anyway. I dunno, we drank tons and tons during my study abroad so I guess I have a big of a nostalgic place for em.

Other loots...

Kurt also got one of these, which are super natsukashii too. They're crustless sandwiches? Like they make the sandwich, and then mmm smoosh off the crusts, so that the bread sort of seals itself. Anyway they're super trashy konbini foods but they're yummy. ^^;;
After showering and napping since we were both tired from all the traveling, we went back out to look around Takadanobaba station. I'd been there once or twice before, since it's the station where Waseda University is? It's one of the top universities in Japan, rival to Keio (where I went). I figured there'd be tons of stuff near the station since it's a college town and all.

In the end what we did manage to find was a supermarket, and supermarkets usually have...food :D ready made food to be precise. And usually late at night, they markdown the foods that haven't been sold yet. Yaaaay. Bargain hunting for food. This is when you know that you've ventured too far into the land of frugality. :3

Whatever I don't care, the food is delicious.

Isn't that right Kurt?

Yesss....yesss that's right. >) Oh forgot to mention, the apartment is furnished with a mini stove (1 burner), and simple kitchen implements like pots, pans, some dishes. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

That was pretty much it for our first .5 days in Japan though. It was really late by that time and we'd completely screwed up our sleep schedules. It was still a really good first day, full of old memories. :) Back in Japan at last.........