We woke up and, once ready, checked out and caught the shuttle bus to the airport.  Check in was very quick, with my 22 kg of luggage.  The bag felt heavier than that, so I was quite relieved!

We had breakfast at a cafe, and spent time together, before saying goodbye.  I then started the long haul back home, after a very enjoyable and busy time.

It took us a couple of trains, but we worked our way to Narita.  Because it was a long journey, and we were saving money by not catching the Narita Express, we decided to spend the extra 700 yen and take the “Green Car”.  These are basically the “First Class” cars, where you get a seat, and even a food service!  I managed to get some work done on the way, and the trip just flew.

At Narita train station, we put my bags in a locker and walked down the main street.  Narita is a very nice town – I’ve only ever seen the airport until now.  We found a restaurant where we watched a man pull a live eel out of a bin (full of them), cut its head, poke a peg through its eye to hold it to the counter, cut it, gut it, and pass it to the person across the table.  He put skewers through it, after which they got cooked, and served up to us on rice for lunch!  That’s about as fresh as it gets!  It would have been ~15 minutes from swimming to being eaten!  The sauce they put on it was delicious, and we polished it all off, washed down with a beer, of course!  It was very refreshing as the weather was really starting to warm up (~27 degrees).

We went to the shrine, and walked around there.  There was a lovely garden to walk through, but very hilly so good exercise too.  But eventually we left and made our way back to the train station.  There we caught a (free) shuttle bus to the hotel we had booked in to for the night.

Our room was really nice.  We had a view of the airport, and could watch planes take off and land.  Eventually we were hungry again, and went up to the top floor for dinner, where we had a few small dishes to eat, and had a beautiful night view of the town.  We then went downstairs to the convenience store, and bought some OJ and a snack to have for breakfast the next morning, intending to have a proper breakfast at the airport, but needing something to keep us going.

Long day of work.  I met Kaoru at the train station when she got home, and we went out to “our” restaurant for our last dinner out in Fujisawa together.  As always, we were greeted with a friendly smile, and it was nice having a “local” restaurant.  Pity there isn’t a no smoking area in it, but it wasn’t too bad.

Long day of work.  I met Kaoru at the train station when she got back, and we went out for dinner.  We had a place in mind that we wanted to look at, but they didn’t have a table, so we found another restaurant, which was quite nice.

More catching up on work.

Today was back to reality – a busy work day.

I then made sushi for dinner, to have my last time before making it at home.

Todays plan is for some exercise before going home.  And what better way than a hike?

It looks like a nice little hike.  Through the shrine, up a few steps, and we’d be at the Peace Pagoda.  How easy is that?  Then we started doing the hike…

Lots of steps (but what’s new?), and very steep.  Then we got off the steps, and the trail was not very well marked.  We ended up not knowing where to go, and wondered if we were actually going to make it to the top!  But after a lot of wandering, we eventually made it, and the view was worth it!

The hike back down was following the road, so much more straight forward.  We had checked out of our hotel, but we walked past it and refilled my camel back so we would have some more water for the day.  We then caught the trolley car across town, and ended up at the Hiroshima Castle.

The castle grounds are quite large, and a lot of people were picnicing in them, and enjoying the sunshine of this beautiful May afternoon.  After a wander around the grounds, we went inside the castle.  No cameras were allowed, so nothing to show.  But each floor illustrated some of the history of the castle.  At the top, we were presented with another great view of Hiroshima.

We then made our way back to the hotel to pick up our bags, and caught the Shinkansen back home.  It was a long trip, but eventually we were back in Fujisawa.

After dinner we decided to go for a couple of drinks.  We went to an “English” bar, but it wasn’t as enjoyable as the Aussie Bar in Hiroshima.  We talked about what a wonderful weekend it had been.