Voyage

HOW TO GET FROM NARITA AIRPORT TO ICU

I'm really quite behind on my blog whoops

In any case, I was really quite worried about getting from Narita Airport to Musashisakai, so I looked up everything in advance. I preferred the train route as I don't like buses very much (although if you're a friend of mine reading this blog you will already know my hatred of buses). At Narita airport terminal 2, I went downstairs to the JR East Ticket Office (I think it's called) and asked for a N'ex and Suica package from Narita airport to Musashisakai station. By the way, they speak English at this ticket office. The N'ex ticket is a ticket that will last you from Narita Airport to a lot of stations in Tokyo, and they also include the Suica card which is a card that lets you pay for trains by swiping it as you enter a ticket gate and swiping it when you leave at your destination. I haven't actually used it yet as it was not necessary for the trip to Musashisakai. After buying this package I then went downstairs to where I would catch the Narita Express. Me and Fiona were pretty worried because the map on the wall seemed to indicate that the train went to two separate places so we were like WHAT IF WE GET THE WRONG TRAIN. However, there was no need to worry as what happens is that the train splits in two at around Tokyo station and half the train goes to one place whilst the other goes somewhere else. As all seats are reserved, the ticket office will give you the right ticket to be in the right carriage to go to the right place. After being on the train for about an hour and a half, we got off at Shinjuku station to transfer to the Chou line for Takao (I think, it's the Chuo line that isn't for Tokyo anyway). Shinjuku is a big station, but there is a map online if you google shinjuku station map. The map isn't very helpful except that it tells you which trains leave from which platforms - the one I had to get left from platforms 11 & 12 (I think. I know it left from 11, anyway). To get to Musashisakai I had to get on the rapid train, but not the special rapid as this does not stop at Musashisakai. It wasn't too hard to figure out as I knew the kanji for Musashisakai (武蔵境!) so I was able to figure out which train it was. And even if you do miss a train the next one comes in another 5 minutes anyway.

After arriving at Musashisakai station (it took about 20 minutes) we left and found the hotel relatively easily. It was past 3pm at this point so we were able to check in. Yay hotels.

Hotel Love Songs

Since I'm really behind on blog posts this is going to be a short one about my first two days in Japan saying in the Radisson Hotel Narita.

So we got to the hotel and our suitcases were immediately taken away from us, when we were then told check in was at 3. I mean, I knew that already but I had some sort of hope they would let us check in early......alas, we had to sit in the lounge on couches for about 3 hours. Whilst I was really really tired. We did look at the one gift shop they had, and I managed to have a half hour nap lying on my bag (whilst Fiona was looking after it anyway lol). Then we finally got to go upstairs to our room. After asking if the tap water was drinkable (the woman said it wasn't but I don't believe her now) I think I might have gone downstairs and bought water...I can't remember if I was too shy or not. I then got changed into my pjs and sat and watched tv for a while despite being really sleepy. Then I slept for a few hours, got up and.....watched tv? I don't really remember much. Over the two days in the hotel we went for lunch at the restaurant, I slept, I watched tv (NHK have some weird English show with some woman singing a song called Blow Your Horn...) we bought things from the gift shop to eat...I ordered room service and some guy from Nepal came up and I spoke awkwardly to him in Japanese because I thought he was Japanese...we then sent our luggage on to our next hotel, Hotel Mets Musashisakai, by Kuroneko Yamato/taq bin. This was really helpful as it meant we could then go to the airport the next day to catch the train to Musashisakai without 2 giant suitcases each.

Next entry is about how to get from Narita Airport to Musashisakai. It's not that hard so long as you look things up before hand and don't go without knowing anything :)