Audrey King's trip to Japan Diary

Tokyo - DAY SIX

Saying Goodbye
Goodbye Noriko! Goodbye Sapporo! Tokyo, here we come! Today was the day we had to go to Tokyo and start getting ready for the second JVUN conference. It’s a long way from Sapporo (822 kilometers or 511 miles) so we had to get up and out to the airport early. All the "international" guests (Joan, Dr. Oppenheimer, Adolf and I, as well as our friends and families) were traveling together so you can imagine the piles and piles of luggage we had to take with us. We needed three vans!


Saying goodbye to Noriko & the Nanbyo Centre All packed up and ready to go to the airport!

At the Airport
At the airport we checked in our suitcases and bags (including George’s extra large golf umbrella that was too big for a suitcase!) Some JVUN staff were coming to Tokyo with us, so they had lots of luggage too. Then we saw the marathon wheelchair racers checking in their extra large racing wheelchairs. WOW! The airline staff must have broken a record with the number of wheelchairs they checked in that day!


Marathon Racing Wheelchair

Some Japanese families were having a “picnic” lunch on the floor. “Why not us?” we said, so we sat on the airport floor while we waited for the airplane and had a picnic lunch too. (Except for me who stayed in my wheelchair and had the most comfortable seat of all. Ha! Ha! )


Our picnic lunch on the airport floor

  • Have you ever had a picnic on the floor?
  • What’s the strangest picnic you’ve ever been to?

Keio Plaza Hotel
It took an hour and a half to fly from Sapporo to Tokyo and then another hour and a half to drive to the Keio Plaza Hotel because there was so much traffic on the roads. Our hotel was just one of many skyscrapers in Sinjuku, Tokyo’s famous shopping district. It was an elegant hotel that had seven different restaurants to choose from. Our room on the 30th floor was wheelchair accessible, with lots of giveaway things in the bathroom, like combs and shower caps and Q-tips and toothpicks and toothbrushes – just in case you forgot yours!


The Keio Plaza comfort seat


I wonder which button does what? Close-up of the controls.

The toilet seat was amazingly AWESOME - definitely something worth writing home about! It was soft and padded and heated and had push button controls to change the temperature of the toilet seat as well as the water and air which sprayed and then dried you. Martha was so excited about it that she kept taking pictures. COOL EH? (Or should I say “HOT?” - if you happen to press the wrong button, that is!)

  • I’ve never seen such a fancy hi-tech toilet seat. Have you?

Tokyo
From our hotel window all you could see was skyscrapers. Many had heliports for landing helicopters on the roof. I never saw even one helicopter but I’m wondering if that’s a quicker way to get to work and avoid rush hour traffic?


Tokyo skyscrapers, many with “heliports”.

How many heliports can you find in the skyscraper picture?

Down below at street level, Tokyo was very busy with hundreds of people rushing about everywhere. It was easy to spot Japanese business men because they all wear black suits and ties and carry black briefcases, no matter how hot it is! Japan is so hot and humid that many people use fans or cloths to wipe the sweat from their faces and necks as they rush about


Typical Tokyo street

  • Do you know what the hottest country in the world is?
  • Do you think it is Japan, or someplace else?


Tokyo at night


The Keio Plaza hotel at night

Tomorrow I’ll finally get to meet Kenji Kujo, my book translator. We’ve been e-mailing each other for many months so I can hardly wait to meet him in person! I wonder what he looks like?

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