Day 9 – 23/10/19
This is a pretty relaxed day – I didn’t had anything much on itinerary except to go to Mount Moiwa. Hence I slot in a shopping trip at Tanukikoji shopping trip and a visit to Baristart, before heading to Mount Moiwa in the late afternoon.
Although I always wanted to visit shotengais in Japan, I often find myself wandering aimlessly when I’m there, and feel like I’m wasting my time. It’s such a dilemma! Same goes for the trip at Tanukikoki (狸小路). We simply just walked along the covered shopping street, and got ramen as lunch. The ramen was… not too bad. Then we went over to Nijo Market for a quick visit – my mom wasn’t too enthusiastic with the prices at Nijo Market though lol. Took a picture of Sapporo TV Tower while on the way there. Then we popped into Baristart for my daily 2nd caffeine intake.
Then, it’s a trip up to Mount Moiwa! The view was so good… for awhile. Then fog came over and settled in… sigh. Oh well… I’ll probably revisit at some point for sure. Would really love to see a clear night view.
Day 10 – 24/10/2019
Went to Nakajima Park today – amazing fall colours! Finally we managed to enjoy true fall colours in Japan…
Had lunch at Ootoya – although it’s a chain restaurant, they served real high quality food and the taste was absolutely amazing!
And because there’s nothing much else on the itinerary, we just did some light shopping before going back to hotel to pack and rest. Thereafter, we had dinner at Barikiya (ramen). I feel it’s a-okay but Bruno somehow loved it.
Day 11 & 12 – 25-26/10/2019
We were supposed to fly into Narita airport from Chitose, then take an international flight from Narita back to Singapore. However there was a typhoon that skimmed past Japan, thus the wind was so strong that the pilot aborted landing and made a steep climb back up. My mom had a huge scare of her life… a lot of other passengers were screaming as well. At that point… I was just glad I was on the trip with her.
The pilot rerouted the plane to Haneda airport instead, and chaos ensued as we needed to retrieve our luggage and find our way to Narita airport by ourselves. What’s supposed to be a straightforward transfer became complicated when we realised almost all transport options (bus, trains) have been suspended. By the time we actually did managed to get to Narita airport, we were several hours behind the boarding time. The ANA counter staff did not help either, only gave us a US hotline and asked us to call for alternative arrangement. It was such a frustrating experience. After 2 hours of being on the line as IDD calls and several trips to the counter to express frustration, one ANA counter lady finally gave in and helped us scour her system and booked us on the next available flight the next day. And with that settled, we realised there’s no way to get back to town for a hotel (all hotels in the airport vicinity were fully booked) as it’s too late and all transport services had ended. The Narita airport crew were nice enough to distribute complimentary food ration, mineral water etc, and even provided sleeping bags for all who are stuck in the airport. My mom found a nice cosy quiet spot to lie down somewhere in an alley, while I chose to stick by our luggage with a charging spot. The sleeping bag was surprisingly comfy, and I did managed to get some hours of much needed sleep after all that frustration.
I took an early morning shot from the airport when I woke up at around 5+am in the morning – I kinda like the shot very much, for god knows what reason. Our breakfast include some buns which we bought previous night at the Lawson convenience store in Narita airport, before we headed to the food court for a proper breakfast. I ate niku udon – not the best but one can’t complain after such a long night.
We managed to freshen ourselves up, and head to Ippudo ramen for lunch, before catching the afternoon flight back to SG. This time, the flight was uneventful.
After this trip, I’ve learnt quite a lot of lessons. First, don’t ever fly into Japan during typhoon season, not even if it’s towards the end of the typhoon season already. Second, it’s still best to fly with SQ, even if it could be more expensive. When there’s delays like this, you’ll notice ANA staff will help their Japanese customers on priority… Non Japanese customers will take a backseat. I’m quite sure if that has been a SQ flight, we would have been put on the next available flight right away.
Sleeping over on the floor at the airport is an experience I won’t ever forget. It’s not a bad experience. Far from it. I kinda enjoy the experience – I just felt guilty that my mom had to go through it as well. My mom was surprisingly quite upbeat about the experience too – she handled it more calmly that I would expect her to. She probably felt I was already too stressed with trying to get us onto the next available flight, and she shouldn’t add on to my stress. Love my mom.
The reason why it took so long (3 years!) to write this… it’s simply because I’m lazy. And that the next Japan trip will be coming up – hopefully I won’t put it on the backburner like I did for this trip.
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