The Final Day Part 2

After shopping in Asakusa, I headed to the docking bay and waited for our boat to arrive.  They told us a specific time to arrive at the dock by and said that if we were not there then we would be left behind.  Our boat was scheduled to leave at a specific time and we needed to be on time.  I don't know why they told us this because the boat didn't leave until almost 45 minutes after we were suppose to have met up.  It made no sense to me.  Anyway, once the boat arrived we got on.  It was really fun!  Mostly because I had never been on a boat that had 2 stories.  It was so cool.  I felt really important being on this boat.  It was rather large, like it was meant for rich powerful people, so being on this boat knowing that my tuition paid for it made me feel important. 

We were heading to Odaiba, which is a man made machine operated island in which Narita Ariport is located.  Had I known that's where I had landed, I would have been more impressed and a little freaked out.  But I didn't need to be any more excited than I already was when I arrived in Japan.  Any way, the point of us being on the boat was so that we could get all our prizes from the stupid scavenger hunt that everyone forgot about (as I said they would) and play bingo "in Japanese" and have our final tastes of Japanese sweets.  They gave us the run down of the schedule for the boat trip and also instruction on the food.  They ordered enough sweets for every person to have only one of each.  If we didn't like something that didn't give us the right to take 2 of something else. They released the girls first to go below deck for our desserts.  There were 8 different options to choose from.  Some of them had chocolate so I only had 5 pieces but they will still filling and I was satisfied with my 5 pieces.  One girl, however, decided that since she didn't like any of the other options that she would just have 8 of the one that she liked.  This angered most of the other girls and as a vengence they each followed her lead and took several of one item resulting in some of the guys not being able to have any dessert at all.  The leaders got really angry with the girls but they seemed to not take any notice.  I was frustrated with them too.  I felt bad for the guys that didn't get anything.  They at least were good sports about it though.  Not a single one of them complained, they just joked and said that that meant more water bottles for them.  

Afte our desserts we went back to the first level to play bingo "in Japanese."  It wasn't really in Japanese because we could see the numbers being posted on the number generator and everyone said the number in English first then in Japanese.  So, I wouldn't really call that playing bingo in Japanese but oh well.  2 people really made me angry.  They weren't paying attention much in the beginning then suddenly after several people had already won awesome prizes decided that then was a good time to have the teacher go back threw all the numbers and make sure that they didn't miss any numbers.  The teachers did it too! Twice!  Both times, the people ended up winning.  I think that's not fair.  If you weren't paying attention then you missed the number.  We have moved on so that doesn't give you the right to force yourself to win.  We were really far in to the game and at that point there were only 2 prizes left.  They had enough for about 10 people to win something.  I wasn't upset for not being able to win something, because there was no way I was going to be able to fit it in my bag after I packed my yukata, I was more frustrated in the fact that they took away anyone else's ability to win who had been paying attention the entire time.  Whatever.  -_-

After the bingo game, they decided to annouse the top 3 teams of the scavenger hunt.  Now, I heard a rumor that they were going to be handing out over sized T shrits as a prize for winning the scavenger hunt.  I thought that was such a lame prize for a very pointless game.  But in a way, it makes sense,  a pointless prize for a pointless game.  Guess what we won?  Over sized t shrits.  Yippie....  At least the people that were in my group felt that all their frustration of that day paid off.  I'm glad too, cuz everyone except one person was suuuuuper angry that day.  

After the dumb t shirt prize they told us we could go upstairs.  We all looked up at the roof and asked ourselves what in the world they were talking about.   We knew that there was nothing up there and there was also no way that any one would be able to get up on top of the roof any how.  They told us that there was a viewing area all the way in the back on the roof.  They showed us where it was and everyone was amazed.  It was very windy and smelled like the ocean.  We sailed all the way around Odaiba.  It's a cool place.  It's made out of garbage and is controled by a computer so that it doesn't sink and stays level.  Especially since an Airport is on it.  All the major TV broadcast stations are located there.  People actually live there too.  It's a rather large island.  They even importanted sand from China so that they could have a beach.  I think that's funny.  There were people on the shore of the island who were waving to us and calling out to us so we waved and called back.  It was fun.  It was also super windy.  My dangling butterfly earings kept smacking my neck and face because of the wind.  I thought for sure they were going to rip out of my ears.  The wind was blowing very hard.  It kind of hurt my ears after a while.  I had to hold them still at one point.  

Once the boat ride was over, we headed back to the bay and they gave us the complicated instructions on how to return to our hotels.  In reality it wasn't as hard as it sounded, but trying to remember all the names of the stations in Japanese is confusing.  

One of the girls wanted my help in purchasing her bus ticket from the hotel to the air port, so she followed my friend and I back to our hotel to purchase the bus ticket.  After she purchased it, she went back to her hotel and my friend and I went into the loby of ours to use the computer.  We needed to print out our boarding passes.  Sounds simple right?  Well, yes if you were in America using an American computer.  Everything was in Japanese.  Even the keyboard was all messed up and out of order.  It took over an hour to get our passes printed out.  My friend is a really funny so the entire process my sides were in so much pain from laughter.  
Her flight left very early the next day and I told her to call my hotel room to say goodbye to me.  She didn't want to because she was afraid I would be mad at her.  I reassured her that I wouldn't be mad, just afraid that something woke me up.  She told me that she thought I would have a panic attack and freak out.  I didn't think it was going to be that bad, but she did agree to say good bye to me in the morning before she left.

I went back to my hotel room and skillfully packed all my stuff.  I was rather impressed with myself.  I had everything packed nice and neatly but after I got the yukata, I had to take everything out and start again.  But every nook and cranny was filled with something.  Much like a Japanese hotel room.  Every corner and open space is utilized in some clever way.  Maybe I'm becoming Japanese? Hmmm...  After I packed everything, I went to bed.

In the middle of the night, my phone rang but I didn't know it was my phone at the time.  I thought some alarm was going off and that I needed to evacuate my hotel.  The phone ringing sounds in Japan are not at all the same as they are in America.  They don't ring, they beep like a fire alarm.  The caller is pretty much guarenteed an answer if they call and someone is home.  Once I realized it was the phone, I answered and I must have sounded panicked cuz all I heard was my friend laughing and saying "I told you you were going to freak out."  "You have no idea,"  I responded.  I about had a panic attack.  I could still feel my heart pounding really fast.  After saying  goodbye I fell right back asleep.

The next day I finished packing the rest of the things I had to use for that day and made sure that I didn't forget anything and headed out the door to meet with my neighboor.  We were taking the same exact bus to the airport.  I go into her room and there is stuff everywhere.  I asked her if she was still packing and she said that she was but she just couldn't take everything with her cuz it wouldn't fit.  I told her that I would be willing to help her be able to take her towells back with her to America.  I'm sure her mom would appreciate the return of her nice towels.  She said that she never liked the towels anyway and insisted that she leave them behind.  She almost got rid of some samll valuables, but I snuck them into her bags without her knowing.  Interestingly enough, all the stuff she was leaving behind was her mother's belongings.  I'm sure her mother appreciated the fact that I saved some of her jewelwery and hand towels and laundry detergent.  This poor girl had way too much stuff.  She took with her 3 suitcases.  That's just too much for an excursion abroad program like ours was.  I did my best to help her get her bags out of the room and help her carry her stuff but I had my own items to be worried about too.  

We met another person who was riding the same bus as us.  I didn't know he was meeting us also so it was a surprize to me.  He said that he knew where the bus stop was so we followed him there, but once we got to where he said that the bus was suppose to be, I knew it was the wrong place because we were at just a regular city bus stop.  He kept saying that it made sense that that was the right place.  I asked him if he could speak or read Japanese and he said not really.  He just noticed that both signs had the same numbers so he assumed it was the right place.  With that, I walked and found a police officer and showed him my bus ticket and asked where exactly the bus stop was.  He pointed out the way for us and we found the bus.  It was obvious it was the correct bus because there was a line of people with their suitcases waiting to board the bus.  

The luggage loader asked me what terminal I was getting off at the airport and I had to ask him to repeat what he said because I was thinking in Japanese and was not expecting him to know English at all.  My neighboor had no idea what terminal she needed to go to.  She said she was just planning on walking to the correct one if she went to the wrong one, and we had to tell her that walking was not an option because this airport is amoung the largest in the world.  She would need to take either the train or a bus to get the other terminal.  Walking is just not something that is possible.  Thankfully though, the bus driver knew which airlines were at what terminal.  She told him the airline and he told her the terminal.

I was wanting to look out the window the entire bus ride to the airport, it was over a 90 min ride, but the friend I had helped the night before thought it would be a good idea to talk to me about her family the entire drive.  I didn't want to be rude, so I had to give up my final look of Japan for listening to this girl who complained about Japan the entire trip and talked about nothing but going home all day everyday, for the entire bus ride.  All I wanted to do was cry on the bus ride cuz if I didn't cry before leaving then I would go home being really sad and cry at home and make everyone confused.  I had to fight back the tears as I left my hotel, I had to fight back tears walking to the bus, and now I am having to force them back in again listening to this girl talk about her family and how excited she is to be going home.  She did not like Japan at all.  I don't know how but oh well.  To each his own.  

 

Ok, so there is going to be one final posting of Japan but that will coming later.  I have school to be focusing on right now.  It was a nice break to be talking about Japan though. :D