We’re home now and a little jet lagged. We spent our last morning in Narita, sightseeing one of the biggest temples in Japan. I was very very beautiful, but it was cold and rainy and I had a hard time staying warm. We ate some ramen noodles for lunch and they were delicious. Mine came in a chili pepper broth with bean sprouts, onion, and pork and were unlike any ramen noodles I ate in college.

After lunch, we returned to the hotel to change into dry, comfortable clothes for the flight and took the shuttle to the airport. We got through security and decided to check out the duty-free shops in the airport, where I bought some sake to bring home. Charles also realized that he left his iPhone at the hotel, so we got the opportunity to figure out Japanese payphones, so that we could ask the hotel to mail it back to him.

We boarded our flight and the ride was pretty uneventful but for an elderly, sickly Japanese man in front of us who had VERY bad gas issues (a couple of times I had to check to make sure my eyebrows hadn’t melted off). I noticed that there was a movie on the in flight entertainment called Hachiko: A Dog’s Story, which I had never heard of but turned out to star Richard Gere and was the story of the same dog that we saw the statue of in Shibuya (the dog that waited at the station every day for 10 years after his master’s death for his master to come home). The movie, just like any other movie about the loyalty of dogs who later die, was very sad and I was glad that everyone else was sleeping so as not to witness my meltdown.

After the flight, which again seemed to go by fairly quickly, we made it through customs and security (again) and had to rush to get on the train to the correct terminal. We knew we needed on the first train if we were to make our flight, but there was a huge crowd waiting to get on train. The train unloading and loading was not nearly as efficient as in Japan, so we decided to push our way through to make sure we got on. I was holding on to Charles so as to make sure I got on the train with him when the doors started to close. We shoved our way on, but when those doors close, they really mean it. I was nearly squished!

We made our flight, which actually ended up leaving late due to some kind of equipment failure with the contraption that’s used to push the plane back from the gate. We dozed off during the brief flight to XNA but were too squished and uncomfortable to really sleep. Cline picked us up and brought us home, where we were able to take nice hot showers before passing out for the night.