Toni at the hostel
Our last day saw us in transit from the island of Hokkaido, Japan back to our hometown of HangZhou, Zhejiang, China flying via Tokyo. We departed from our hostel in Hirafu at around 5am in the morning, and took a train for three hours via Sapporo to the New Chitan airport. On the way north east, the train track passed close to the northern coast of Hokkaido, allowing for some very nice photos from the train window.
Japanese Ticket Machine / Our “trainlet”
We checked in early at the airport and managed to jump onto an earlier flight. As such, we departed at about 9:15am and are heading over to Tokyo early and should arrive before midday at Haneda domestic airport.
Beautiful Hokkaido coastline
We arrived at around 11am and decided to grab lunch at the airport. After walking around the large restaurant area (several levels) we selected a place with reasonable pricing, and ate lunch for about an hour. Afterwards we bought “limousine” bus tickets Narita airport, which took about an hour and ran almost exclusively along freeway.
Transiting across Tokyo
Once we had arrived at Narita, we had to wait about forty minutes before we could check in. That done, we wandered around the terminal attempting to spend the remaining 3,000 yen (about AUD $35) which we had accrued in coins! I bought a samurai wine bottle cover (which will be discussed on Aussie Wine Guy) as well as a jar of wasabi salt. Toni bought a little smiley figure who nods his head (and is solar powered) as well as a sushi magnet.
Then we took the transit train to the second terminal and waited to board our flight back to Shanghai. The second building had a very interesting set of model planes commemorating 100 years of Japanese airplanes, worth a bit of a look. I found a vending machine and enjoyed my last coffee in a can (surprisingly good). The flight was without incident, although the weather presented a nasty cold front.
Second Building / Model Plane
We arrived just around 7:20pm as the flight was late by almost 20 minutes. We glided through customs only to wait 20 minutes for bags to come out. By 7:50pm we were in a taxi bound for Shanghai’s Hongqiao railway station, and we just made the last train to HangZhou, which departed at 9:12pm.
We caught an indirect train, it took just over an hour to arrive in HangZhou, and then it took us a little longer to find a taxi to take us home. We finally walked in the door at 11pm, marking the end of a really long day. We had started at 4:30am in the lounge of the hostel in Hirafu, and finished the day at 11pm at the door to our apartment in HangZhou. Another trip in the books.