日本！ただいま！！！

めんどくさい！Troublesome! That pretty much sums up half of today.  Ok, well it was not as bad as I am making it. Three good things happened today: 1) My girlfriend came and saw me off! It was really sad and tearful, but I am happy that she was pretty much the last person I saw when I left. 2) I had the window seat PLUS and empty seat next to me so I had a whole section to myself! Oh how the space felt. 3) Took me a good old fashion Japanese bath! For some of those who don't know, its pretty much washing your body, then entering a hot tub of water! Felt so good after all the trouble I went to.

Now onto the troublesome parts. So, as Nihon Dai tells you, I had to take the Narita Express to the JR Shinigawa station. However, there was some sort of accident so the Narita express was closed down. woopty-doo....What this meant was that I had to find another way to Mishima from the airport. Luckily, there are employees that speak English, not good, but enough. One of the employees told me I had to take the Jr Narita Terminal directly to Tokyo. So, I listened and went to go get a ticket for that train. Unfortunately, when I was buying the ticket I had less than 2-3 minutes to go through the ticket gate and get down the escalator. Oh yeah some people would have been like "You should have ran." Well, I couldn't have because I was rolling around two nearly fifty pound suitcases and for some odd reason (because the airport doesn't want carts downstairs) the airport decided to put bars by the escalator where you can only roll one suitcase at a time. Then I had to go down the long escalator. I was too tired and lazy to carry the two suitcases down the escalator because what if I tripped and fell?  That would not be a pretty site. Now here is the good part. Right when I got down the escalator....the train left.  Yep...it left. Now I had to go right back up the escalator with two suitcases and go through the bars again to go talk to the ticket booth employees. Here is another good part. The next train wasn't going to come until an hour later. Great! I had nothing to do besides stand by the ticket booth and look like some odd person. Well, after I got onto the train, I was on my way to Tokyo, which took another whopping hour and a half! But then I chose to take the train instead of the bus because the train only cost 1,280 yen, while the bus would have cost 3,000 yen, but would have been faster to get to Tokyo. I'm on a budget so what can I do? Go for the cheap one of course. However, after I boarded the train and got comfortable, some ticket lady came up to me and asked for my ticket. Apparently, I boarded the first class train cabin. She was about to move me to another cart, but before she could, I asked her how much it would cost to upgrade. She said "1,000 yen." I thought it would have been more expensive but I got lucky somehow. So after that incident and an excruciating hour and half of wondering why it was taking so long to get to Tokyo because we stopped probably a good 10 stops. I was starting to get nervous that I got on the wrong train. I finally arrived at around 4:30 at Tokyo. From there on, my journey of excruciating agony continues. So, yeah...I took the wrong train THIS time. I was suppose to take the Tokaido Shinkansen (bullet train) which would have led me directly to Mishima. However, I ended up taking the, I guess, local Tokaido line. It stopped so many times and guess how long it took to finally get to the last station, which wasn't even Mishima? It took a whole two hours! After finally arriving at the last station, Amita, I finally decided to ask someone which train I should take to Mishima because I was pretty scared and nervous that I was lost. But, I actually wasn't lost.  At Amita, I just had to walk straight across to the next train on the same platform. Yay! When I got on, this time I made sure and asked a local Japanese man if the train stopped at Mishima, IN JAPANESE! Woohoo! I feel a little accomplished because whenever I had to communicate earlier with anyone I always asked if they was able to speak English, which they were able to, then I spoke to them in English.  But not this time. He understood me perfectly. =D I feel so accomplished. HAHA well after another hour train ride from Amita, I finally arrived at Mishima. What was odd during the whole trip was that I just walked straight to the next train and not go through any ticket gates.  When I had to go through Mishima's ticket gate, I had to adjust my fair, but I let the ticket booth employee do that because I did not know how to do it. In the end I only had to pay 1,900 yen. Totaling my trip up to only 4,780 yen.  If I would had take the Tokaido Shinkansen instead of going through all that trouble, it would have cost me around 7,000 yen according to Nihon Dai.  However, the whole time consuming and cost less money was worth it. It is an experience that I would never forget and mistakes that I could learn from. It was stressful, but hey, thats not really an experience you can get back home, especially with no phone or internet to google map your way through. I am pretty tired now and will update again tomorrow or another day. But until then, じゃね！