To Tobu, Narita
Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Sun 12 Nov 2017 23:57
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Back to Narita Airport to Stay
at Tobu Hotel
  This was our view of Mount Fuji on
waking at 05:45 and then at 06:15.
 Very soft
pinks as the sun caught the morning mist at 06:30.
  After breakfast, (still cannot
believe a hotel of this calibre can’t rustle up an omelette), Bear remembered to
take down the toilet paper stuck up with toothpaste
that had prevented the bright hall light coming on every time we breathed near
it. I snuck a final shot of Mount Fuji.
 OK just one really
final picture at ten o’clock, before we trundled downstairs for our
shuttle bus at ten past.
   As we waited for our driver to climb
aboard and the manager to bow, thank us for staying and wave us off, I saw this
lady chatting to her friend wearing a lovely neck ruff. Fifteen minutes later after slowly
winding our way through the market traffic we pulled up at the train station. We
get our last peek at Mount Fuji before turning our
backs and heading into the station.
   As I wait for Bear to buy our tickets
(our JR Passes do not cover the first leg), I see a couple of pictures of the station in days gone by, along with a rustic plaque. Bear rushes over to where he left me,
there is a train in if we hurry to platform
2. Right behind him, we just make it.
 I did manage an on-the-run picture of
a modern day Thomas sitting quietly on platform
one.
  Settled on the train, we get a chance
to see the full extent of perhaps the happiest train in
Japan.
 An hour later and we have twelve
minutes to wait for our second train, a busy schedule on a
post.
 The backdrop here
is a very pleasant one and although the wind is chipper, the sun is
warm.
  In comes our
girl and we settle for another hour.
 Really weird to go along for a while at the same speed as a next door
neighbour until it went up a slope and out of sight.
 Our third and final train of the day was the Narita Express,
abbreviated as N'EX,
It is a limited
express
train service operated in Japan since 1991 by East Japan Railway
Company
(JR East), serving Narita International
Airport
from various Greater Tokyo
Area
stations. Services are approximately half-hourly in the mornings and evenings,
and hourly through the middle of the day. The main competition for the Narita
Express
is Keisei Electric
Railway's
Skyliner. This EMU (electric multiple unit) train
happily trundles along at eighty miles an hour, the overhead electrickery
running at 1,500 V DC. We had an hour and ten minutes, just long enough to beat
Bear at Scrabble. Huh.
  We got out at
Terminal 2 and had a good look at our train. Ten cars
of sixty eight feet and an end car at each end of just under sixty nine, meant
that looking left and right, all we could see was
train. Soon out of the station we headed for bus stop 65 and there was a
shuttle bus waiting to take us to our hotel, after a brief stop at Terminal
1.
Notched up today - a shuttle bus, three trains, another shuttle bus and 111 miles.
Six hours from door to door and Beds settles in. Bear had expected an airport broom cupboard, so wasn’t he surprised when our fifth floor room was big, airy and nicely laid out – we both have bedside tables and lamps. Bath in the bathroom, yes, but no hot seat on the toilet AND only one pair of bedroom slippers each. Grrrrrrr.
ALL IN ALL A VERY PLEASANT TRIP I THOUGHT THE VERY SAME
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