Monday 31 August 2009

Train Day

I left Sado early with a mind to try and meet Harry at Narita Airport (one hour from Tokyo). I had free rail travel so the plan seemed like fun.

It took me nearly all day to get to Narita. I had to take three buses, two trains and a ferry. Fortunately on one of the trains I met a really nice Irish New Yorker called Liam who engaged me with his travel plans. He's been everywhere and seen everything (or at least that was how it felt) so the conversation top quality.

I got to Narita with a slight problem.

I had no idea what flight from Beijing Harry was actually on.

I knew that is was due to land, roughly about 6pm but that was it. In order to track him down I spent a few hours trying to ring Air China to see if they had a record of him being on one of their flights, however in the entire period I failed to get in touch with them once. I also traveled between the two different terminals in order to glean some understanding of which flight he was one.

In the end I waited in the lobby until two flights from Beijing had cleared and then gave up. I went home on the train a little gloomy. In hindsight whats four hours for a friend, nowt really.

I didn't get back to the hostel until 8pm. I met back up with Steve and Jess and politely declined the offer of a night out with them. I had to curtail that sort of stuff from now on.

Instead I made some friends in the common room and waited for Harry.

I went to my Capsule bed around 11pm and there he was, bold as brass, wearing gay hippy jodhpurs a necklace and flannel shirt contraption.

He laughed, I laughed, we embraced and then sat up till four catching up.

Good times were had by all...

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