Two Texan Beasts

More Narita Airport Scenes, Layover in NJ, and HOUSTON!

After our stroll through security, we headed to our gate for a short wait... our plane departed Narita at 4:35pm...

We arrived in NJ at Newark Airport at 4:30pm - 5 minutes before we left Japan!

We weren't excited about our short layover before heading to Houston, but it was a special treat getting to fly over the Empire State building, Statue of Liberty, and where the Twin Towers once stood...

We arrived back in Houston IAH at 9:30pm... we grabbed our luggage and our car and headed back to La Marque... excited to see all of our babies... stopping only to grab a quick bite of Taco Bell before reaching the house (SBeast was craving tacos and didn't trust the ones she saw at the airport in Japan)...

This has been a life changing experience... great respect for the Japanese people and their culture... some of the nicest people I have ever met...

Narita Airport Scenes (Starbucks #5)

After our 1.5 hour ride from Central Tokyo via bus, we finally arrived back where our Tokyo experience began... Narita Airport.

While walking to baggage check-in at the South Gate we found Starbucks #5!

Tokyo Day 6: Last View from Hotel, Last Tokyo Beast Photo, and a Drink for the Road

We finished up with packing and prepared ourselves to leave... we had to take a taxi back to the Hotel New Otani to catch the 9:50am bus ride back to Narita Airport...

We took one last look at our Tokyo view and snapped a final shot of the Tokyo Beasts before heading out the door...

We only had one last drink to try from our vending machine stash... this one was a very interesting fruit soda-like drink... I eyed this for days until I finally dared purchase it from our last vending machine in Central Tokyo. I have no idea what it was, but it was really good (I bought another one from the vending machine in Narita Airport to have on the plane)...

Tokyo Day 6: Packing, Ramen, Asahi and Jerry Lewis' Japanese Twin

After enjoying our sake and conversation about our tour of Tokyo, we began our packing for the flight home...

about 5 am taking a short break from packing - we heated up some water for ramen and cracked out the Asahi... turned on the TV and found a channel with a Jerry Lewis' comedian twin who spoke Japanese! The guys facial expressions and voices he used during his act was very similar to Jerry Lewis and even though we have no idea what he was saying - people were laughing in the background so he must have been funny too...

Tokyo Day 6: Blogging at Strange Hours with Sake and Onigiri

Day 5 ended around 10pm Tokyo time and the morning of Day 6 began a little after 1 am... I don't know if I was anxious about leaving Tokyo and our trip home, or anxious about all the things we still had to finish from the refrigerator before leaving and the fact that we had begun to pack for home - but I couldn't sleep any longer...

I crawled out of bed and turned on the computer... things were running through my mind about our trip so I decided to hop on the blog and write a few things down while listening to SBeast sleep away... she crawled out of bed around 2 am - inquiring what I was doing awake... so I reminded her of all the remaining treats we were supposed to finish the night before, but had crashed from our aching feet instead...

a little after 2 am, we pulled out our sake and onigiri (rice ball wrapped in seaweed)and began our toast to Tokyo... we found the sake and onigiri on our second day in Tokyo at an ampm store... the sake was in a very cute little glass jars... very good treat.

we also found out our final morning in Tokyo that the Astros released 2nd baseman Kazuo Matsui while we were in Tokyo... we won the tickets because of his Dream Destination choice and while we were here we watched his old Japanese team the Seibu Lions play... too strange.

Tokyo Day 5: Final Tokyo Night

After an awesome experience at Sengaku-ji, we made our way back to Sengaku-ji station and headed back towards Hanzomon station.

We had to have one last metro scare before arriving to our "final destination" (everyone kept asking us where our "final destination" was going to be throughout the trip - I must admit it was a little weird hearing that because of the movie)...

at Sengaku-ji station we both hopped on the line taking us back towards Hanzomon, but for some reason Syl decided she needed to walk to another part of the subway car instead of staying near the door we had entered into... well this seemed okay - until we reached the next stop and we realized that rush hour had just begun... very quickly a flood of Japanese entered the car and smashed up against each other until no more could fit inside... needless to say - I couldn't see her at all... and even though I had repeated the name and number of our next stop - I wasn't sure if she remembered... up until now I was able to see her and motion when it was time... there were about six station stops between our entrance and when we needed to exit and lucky for us the station right before our stop most of the people jumped off...

as we both sighed relief - we exited the next stop and made our way to Hanzomon...

we walked back to our hotel, took our things to the room, and went downstairs to the Patio restaurant for one last meal... we ate the Margherita Pizza that we had the first night we had arrived in Tokyo and some spring rolls...

later we headed back upstairs to the tenth floor, relaxed, watched TV, and slowly finished off the last of our vending machine/convenience store buys we had in our refrigerator... including an interesting peach soda, jello, snack corn sticks, and an awesome melon cream soda (not sure why I waited to try this one - it was really good)...