The Getting to Tokyo Saga

The day had come for us to leave for Tokyo. Steve, Marie and I were all packed and excited to get there. We got to the train station nice and early but Steve had been getting tooth aches so we decided that it was best for him to go to the dentist before we left so that we could make sure that everything was ok and that he could get some pain killers for the pain! He managed to get into the dentist first up and sorted out his tooth issues. So everyone was happy and we were on our way. We got to the Shinkansen to find ourselves standing as the train was packed. We eventually got seats after a few stops which was good because I definitely didn't want to stand for 3 and a half hours. Everyone was ok, we had a nice peaceful ride there, slept pretty much the whole way.

When we got there, it was a rush to get off the train. We grabbed our luggage and jackets and headed to the exit of the train. We bought prepaid Shinkansen tickets which cost $144 each. When you get to the exit you have to show your ticket to get out. Steve and I had our tickets ready to go but when we asked Marie if she had hers, she couldn’t find it. Funny that because we saw her holding it the whole way to Tokyo so in between getting our luggage and getting off the train she somehow managed to lose it. Anyone who knows Marie well knows that this is typical Marie. She was pretty stressed (as you would be). We raced back to the train to see if we could find it but the cleaners had already cleaned everything and there was nothing left on the train. We then went up to the lost and found place to try and explain to them what had happened but we had no luck! We were pretty worried at this stage because without the ticket you couldn’t get out of the station without having to buy a new ticket. Being $144 we didn’t want to have to do that. When we go to the exit we tried to explain to the man what had happened. He didn’t understand us and it took us about 20 minutes to make him understand. His first reaction was bad luck you have to pay. We started to fire up a bit then and we argued for about another 5 minutes until the man finally just gave Marie a ticket so that she could get out of the station. We said “arigato” (thankyou) a few times but he didn’t want to hear our thank yous. He just wanted us to get out of his face – pretty much. Well we quickly got the hint and took the ticket and left. Lucky for Marie she didn’t have to pay twice!!

The story doesn’t end here……. We exited one section but then came to another section where you had to put your ticket into the machine again. Well Marie seemed to somehow lose the other ticket that the man gave her. Can you believe it? So there we went again. We had to go up to the other man and explain the whole story again, saying that she lost her ticket, the other man gave her a ticket and then she lost her ticket again. This man had no idea what we were on about, and this section all of a sudden became very busy so I think in the end he just couldn’t be bothered and said ‘go through’. We quickly took his advice and she ran through. We were finally out of the station. Boy that was a very exhausting start to our trip. Something like this could only happen to Marie……. Who loses their Shinkansen ticket? I swear she would lose her head if it wasn’t screwed on!! ( I do love her still- she certainly keeps us on our toes!!!!!) After all that stress we headed straight to our hotel to drop off our luggage before we lost anything else!!