I'm home! The flight was pretty smooth and fast, relatively. Only about 11.5 hours! Watched Hulk about 4 times, never in its entirety though; I never could catch it from the very beginning. (Very good movie though. Interesting direction). No probs in customs this time, unlike last year when I got haggled by the customs folks in San Francisco. Although there was one little snag on my train segment: I'd bought by train tickets over a week in advance, including my bullet train tik to Tokyo and the connecting tik for the train to the airport. It was my first time going to Tokyo, and I was a bit concerned 'cause I'd heard Tokyo station was pretty daunting and confusing, even for Japanese people, so I was expecting a serious treasure hunt once I arrived to Tokyo Station. However, finding my connection to the airport train level was surprisingly easy--I just kept following the signs, which were in English , that read "Narita Airport," down several levels of escalators and stairs until I reached the right platform. No sweat.
Next, I waited about 15 minutes or so for the next airport train to arrive. The train arrived. I got on. I sat down. Soon after an English-speaking Korean woman approached me and asked me if I was sitting in her seat. Apparently, I was. I relinquished the space and stood up, to find that there were no empty seats. At htis point I was wondering why I couldn't sit down, especially considering I'd paid in advance; it didn't really hit me that these were reserved seats. and that I didn't have a reserved ticket. After a while I spotted an empty seat down the aisle and sat in it. After a while, the train guy came through to check everyone's tickets, as they usually do. I was sitting, awaiting the inevitable: that I was going to have to pay MO' MONEY.
So the train guy gets to me and, sure enough, it turned out I had the wrong ticket, train guy indicated that I owed more cash, about $16, actually. I tried to explain to him, in Japanese, that I'd already paid like $12 for my ticket, and was trying to ask if I could just pay the difference. I was nowhere near articulating myself well enough for him to understand me, and he told me to wait while he checked the tickets of the other passengers. (Sigh). Now I'm catching stares from folks. Whatever, man. It was an innocent mistake. It wasn't like I was trying to get over.
So after train guy finished doing his thing, he quickly came back past me ran and went to the car exit. I didn't wait for him to come back and get me. I walked back down the car right up to him where he was speaking to one of the refreshment cart girls, who spoke fluent English to me on train guy's behalf. Well, it turned out that I'd gotten on the "super-duper fast" train, as opposed to the "super fast" train. See, the super fast train costs about 12 bucks, which I'd paid. But the super-duper fast train costs an extra 16 bucks. Say what? You mean to tell me it costs more than double the base ticket fare just to arrive a half-hour earlier?! At this point, we were almost at the airport and there was nothing I could really do except cough up the extra 16 bucks and go about my business--which I did. So I ended up spending almost $30 for an hour-long trainride to the airport, on top of the $100 I'd spent on the bullet train. What a rip! Again, innocent misunderstanding on my part, but a costly one. And there are so many expensive lessons like that to learn in Japan.
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