To think that I woke up feeling at ease today 🙂 After I took a shower, we ate the rest of our food (natto, onigiris, cucumber, and tomato) and took a short walk near our hotel to admire the grand Tokyo Bay. We then packed “everything” and took the Yamanote line to Tokyo Station and got on the Narita Express to the airport. Even though we reserved a ticket for the 12:02pm train, we boarded the 11:30am, and when the attendant came to check our tickets, we just let him know. The Narita Express normally costs $23, but it is included on the JR pass.

Checking in went smoothly (they weighed our bags and both were less than 15lbs each. At security, that was when I noticed to my horror that I couldn’t find the iPhone -__- I used the iPad to locate it and it was still at the Intercontinental Tokyo Bay. We called from a pay phone to the hotel and they confirmed that it was there. We’ll have to have them ship it internationally…which negates some of the cost savings that I hold so dear (but shouldn’t). I could have sworn that I hadn’t taken the iPhone out since going to Odaiba the night before and it would have still been in the top compartment of my backpack. This isn’t the worst thing that could have happened, but it does show that I need to be more careful and really look when we are verifying that we have everything before we leave a certain area. 

We then went airport lounge hunting. The first lounge (ANA lounge satellite 4) had permanently closed but Google never updated that. The second lounge (ANA lounge satellite 5) didn’t accept priority pass because they said that it was too congested…sigh, and at this point, I just felt pretty dejected after all that had happened. Thankfully, the third time’s the charm. ANA lounge satellite 2 did accept priority pass. I was at first skeptical of this lounge since the reviews were pretty bad. Those were mostly because PP members couldn’t get in, but they did accept this time! The lounge had ramen, udon, soba, yakisoba, curry and rice, salad, sandwiches, drinks, etc. The noodles could be ordered either via online or at the counter. I got two ramen and one udon while husband got two soba noodles. I was so happy that we finally got ramen and udon noodles on this trip and didn’t even have to pay for them 🙂

We left the lounge around 3:15pm to buy Tokyo Bananas at the duty free shop…and they were sold out 🙁 We tried to check another shop but they were also out. We didn’t want to miss our flight, so we just got Tokyo Banana pies and a bunch of different flavored Kit Kats totaling 5100 yen to finish off our foreign currency. At the end, we didn’t actually have to rush so hard as our flight was delayed and boarding didn’t even start till 4:20pm. Seemed like a lot of things went not as expected today. It wasn’t the worst thing since we didn’t miss our flight and no one got hurt. My friend has said that if a problem can be solved by money, it’s not that bad of a problem. Our trip went a little sideways at the end, but I’m still glad for it…and glad that we will be home soon. In the meantime as I am writing this, the little blessings are that we have a whole row to ourselves again on the flight back and I was able to pack us some food from the lounge. It’ll be 8:30am when we land…back to reality.

Cost: ship iPhone $31 (thankful it wasn’t too expensive) + Duty free items 5100 yen ~$39 = total $70