Home Sweet Fukuoka

Guess who's back, back again? Eric's back, for the win. That kind of rhymes right? Well I'm back from Tokyo, almost missed my flight, but I made it with literally no time to spare. So since I think it's going to take me a little bit of time to sort through the 1200 or so pictures/videos I've collected over the course of the two weeks I was in Tokyo and I'm not sure when I'll get around to this story, I'll tell it now just to give you guys a taste of my adventures and basically what I went through 3 hours ago.

The Way Home

My flight leaves on Wednesday at 7:50 AM from Haneda Airport which is about an hour away by subway from my hostel in central Tokyo. Subways start at 5:15 AM, so if I was to make it to the airport with even a decent buffer of time (an hour and a half) then I would have to leave at 5:15, get there at 6:15-6:30 and have about an hour and a half to find the terminal, check in a bag, go through security, get to my terminal and board the plane. Even with an hour and a half, it was still cutting it a little close.

The Disaster

I could not sleep the night before for some strange reason. Perhaps I was excited to go home. Not that I didn't absolutely love Tokyo, but I did miss Fukuoka and some of the comforts of just being home. So I laid in bed for 3 hours, played with my itouch for an hour, and then fell asleep sometime around 3:45 I think (an hour before i was supposed to wake up). I did not wake up on time. I groggily checked my watch at 6:20 and freaked. I had overslept an hour and a half. I had exactly an hour and a half to do what I had planned to do in 3 hours. Luckily, I had packed everything pretty well the night before so I got out of the hostel pretty quickly. Ran to the station, waited 4 minutes for the next train (I must have missed the last one by 1-2 minutes) and made my way towards Haneda Airport. I get to the ticket counter and one of the employees actually runs me to the airport security check point. I find out that I had forgot that I packed a swiss army knife in my backpack from LA. I had made it into Taiwan, out of Taiwan, into Fukuoka, out of Fukuoka, and into Tokyo with it, but they finally caught it this time. So they confiscated it, I didn't care that much, I just wanted to make it to the terminal, and another employee switched off and ran me to the gate. I get on the plane exactly at 7:50. Not five minutes later, the plane leaves the gate. Closest call ever. But I'm home now, so I guess it just makes for a good story now.

Stay tuned for Tokyo updates. I'll try not to lag too much.