It was a 15 mins bus ride to our final destination - Mt Minobu. BUT, it will be another 500-600 meters up hill to reach Hino Sawa Bou, where we will be staying! It was pretty challenging for the older folks, so we had to stop a few times to catch our breath.
Mt Minobu is where Nichiren Shu's main temple (Kuonji) is. This place is also one of the top places in Japan for cherry blossom viewing, especially for weeping sakura (branches of sakura that drops downwards). Loads of cars and buses ferrying local tourists come to Mt Minobu during sakura season for sakura viewing. One who intends to visit this place actually need to have a special permit for parking in this area! If you do not have this permit, you are not allowed to park in the area! Tourists start visiting this beautiful serene mountain as early as 7-8am! By 9am, you will see cars waiting PATIENTLY in line. I meant patiently as in the Japanese will just stick to the queue, you don't hear a single honk, and they don't cut queues! I wonder when ever will Malaysians' mentality and civic mindness reach that level?
We checked into Hino Sawa Bou and the lady caretaker of this Inn still remembers both Chien and I. :) She is a nice lady and is able to speak some simple english. We were given 2 rooms for the first night and 3 rooms thereafter. Mind you, it's mens one room & ladies one room la. It was a bit cramp for 5 ladies to share the room but it was bareable. There was afternoon tea ready for us in the room already - Japanese tea (ocha) and also biscuits for each of us. We rested our tired legs while enjoying the tea.
Not long after at 5pm, the lady caretaker came and informed us that furo is ready, which means bath is ready. Yes, it's public bath! As the caretaker knows that we are not so comfortable with the culture of taking bath together, she was courteous enough to let us have our bath 1hr earlier than the usual bath opening hours. In Japan, hot water is expensive, hence, you do not get to take your bath whenever you like.
It was pretty hard on the body after more than 15 hours of travel back from US and with only 1 day of rest to unpack and repack again for the Japan trip. It seems to take forever to reach the land of the rising sun although the plane ride was only 7 hours away. I tell you, I so SICK of air travel at that point of time! Anyhow, I've survived the 'touture' and made it to Japan in one piece! If we would have known earlier that we will be going to US, then it wouldn't be such pain travelling halfway round the globe this way, I could have just saved on my airfare too by doing a stopover in Japan! Ah well...I had to be a tour guide and take a group of 8 from Penang over to Japan and meet up with Chien over there. So that doesn't leave me much choice.
Service on CX wasn't good at all. One can press the button to call for the airsteward/stewardess, but no one seems to come to your attention. Furthermore, the small light on the cabin top will just switch off like that without anyone coming to attend to you. I had to press the button a few times, only will an airstewardess come. This happened again on the way back to Penang. What if this was a life threatening emergency? Wouldn't the person be dead by now?
We touched down at Narita around 8:15pm but we had a long taxi due to the fact that there was still another plane in our designated arrival gate. It took about 20 mins of taxi-ing and finally, with a sigh of relieve, we made it to Japan! It was a long walk from the arrival gate to the immigration counters. Clearing immigration wasn't that bad in Narita and we didn't bum into any issues. Upon arriving at the arrival hall, we were greeted by our luggages seating there on the floor. They were jumping with joy seeing us, waiting for us to pick them up. Unlike in Penang Airport where you had to wait ages for the bags to arrive!
It was late, we had to stay overnight in Narita Airport Rest House for the night before moving out to Mt Minobu the next day. There's still some time to kill before the next hotel shuttle bus arrives, so ChenChen and I went downstairs to check on the train schedule and fare the next day out to Shinjuku St while the rest of the group waited at the arrival hall.
Luckily it wasn't a long ride to the hotel as it is just inside the airport perimeter, just beside terminal 1. It was close to 9:30pm when we finally settled into our respective rooms. The convenience store in the hotel was closed by that time, I had a peek in their ice-cream freezer, hoping to see muar chee ice-cream there. But lady luck didn't shine on me, ice-cream stock was low and muar chee icecream was no where to be found. :( Hopefully when we come back in 10 days time, they have stocked up ice-cream and there will be muar chee ice-cream available! :D We've tasted this 2 years back when we stayed at this hotel and it was very nice!
I was too exhausted to snap pictures on the airport and also the hotel room. Had to call it a day as we are departing early tomorrow morning to catch the train out to Shinjuku enroute to Minobu. It will be another 7-8 hours of travelling tomorrow.
Now there's a big hole in front of my gate and we had to use a plank to partially cover the hole for the time being while my DIY handyman father tries to get this resolved! How unconvenient. Mum went and made a police report on this case, asking for police patrol in the neighbourhood. I wonder if they will really come for patrols, knowing how hardworking our police force are!! Hah.
