…must come to an end.  So it was with our vacation in Japan.  10 days.  Well, 11 if you count the day we lost coming over, but I wasn’t.  Our next mission was to get back to the airport, and get home.

We got back to Ofuna station, and bought tickets on the Narita Express back to the airport.  Actually what we got was tickets on a local train to Yokohama, then on the NEX back to the airport.  Not a big deal.  We found our platform, got on board, and exited at Yokohama.  It turns out we were on the exact platform we needed, so we just stayed put.  Technically I think we were supposed to go out the ticket gate and back in again, because when we arrived at the airport we had to turn both our tickets in to the gate attendant….

The NEX ride out was much like the ride in.  Past the skyscrapers, the stop at Tokyo station, the serene countryside between Tokyo and Narita…  It was a little sad to be leaving.  It felt like we just got there, and that we’d been there forever, all at the same time.

We found the huge Northwest departures area, made our way through, got our baggage checked, cleared security, turned in our duty free paper, and cleared passport control without hardly a wait or a fuss.

The airside part of the terminal at Narita is really quite nice.  We passed the gobs of people waiting in line at McDonalds (why?!) to eat another bowl of Tendon at the Japanese restaurant there, then went back to the gate to await boarding.

The flight back to Minneapolis was much shorter than the flight over from Detroit, about ten hours vs. thirteen.  It was still very, very long.  The food was edible, but luckily the crew was quite generous handing out free beer.  You guys rock.

We finally arrived at MSP,and had to endure, shall we say, an interesting experience at customs and immigrations.  Compared to Tokyo, our system here was a bleeding joke.  There were no clear signs where to line up, no people saying, “citizens here, foreigners here…”  So we ended up roughly in two groups, the passport holders in a few lines, most everyone else in the rest.  Although in our lines, the few foreigners who still made it through were *still* being processed in our lines! Instead of just saying, “You’re in the wrong line!”  Argh.  The guy at the counter seemed less than pleased to be there, despite our attempts at cheerfulness.

Then, after we collected our baggage, everyone was funneled into *one* spot, where one obviously frazzled, but still obnoxiously bossy female agent was basically harassing some of the foreigners while some slipped by unnoticed, and barking at others to not cross her line.  She look at our card and just waved us on through.  Thank god.  Then the next guy look at our card, at us, and rather annoyingly said, “alright, go on.” Like there was something missing from it that should have been added.

Then it was back through security for our connecting flight.  At least that went off without a hitch.  We stopped on the way to our gate for some chicken and cheese nachos and fries.  And beer.  Crappy American fast food, but it was still good.

As we made our way to our gate, we quickly noticed all the things we had missed, er, well, not missed, but that we’d left behind.  People chatting aimlessly to themselves, or rather into their cell phones bluetooth headsets.  Loud conversations going on, us trying *not* to walk on the left, but rather the right.  We’d almost become accustomed to the “Japanese Way(tm)” that we’d been witnessing on the trains and in the stations.  No cell phone conversations, a sense of order among the chaos… this just reminded me of chaos.

Out the window I watched the big cars, SUV’s, and pickup trucks roll by, thinking they looked rather huge.

We got on the CRJ for Tulsa, landed, found the car, and drove home.

Now we just can’t wait for next time!

If you’ve read the entire journal up to now, I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.  I will likely be amending and adding to these posts as we remember things.  I’ll also be writing other posts in more categories, such as photo albums, our daily itineraries, notes on customs, our observations on a few things, quite possibly some video clips…

Thanks again! ありがとう!　and さようなら! for now, that is.

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