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Hawaii Day 7/ Home (2006-11-18)

All good things come to an end and we said goodbye to Hawaii.  Our transport to the airport required us to be at the pick-up spot at ten to noon, so we had time to have lunch before we left.  We thought we could do pizza again, so off to Round Table we went at 11 am after checking out of the hotel.  Our order took 25 minutes (normally 20 minutes) to arrive at our table which meant we had to wolf down the Steak Supreme pizza and then hurried back to the pick-up point.  We made it just in time.  Whew!

To our surprise, we got a stretch limousine to take us to the airport.  Wow.  There're real crystal glasses, goblets and a decanter on the inside panel.  Fancy.  The ride only took half an hour, about half the time it took on the reversed route the day we arrived.  Like everywhere else in Honolulu, the airport was inundated with Japanese tourists.  Plenty of Japanese staff was helping with the check-in procedures which ran very smoothly and at lightening speed.  There was no security check, just a weight station where you plop your suitcase on the scale to make sure it's under 50 lbs.  We had two suitcases, but only one was asked to be weighed.

Honolulu airport's departure area is quite small.  Not much to see while we waited for our flight.  At 2:30 pm, we boarded.  I didn't see one single Caucasian passenger at the gate, there was a handful of Chinese and the rest was Japanese.  The flight was pretty uneventful which is a good thing.  The meal was again, pretty tasty.  The chicken breast was tender and surprisingly juicy and smoky sitting in a pool of yummy BBQ sauce.  I ate everything except the fake mashed potato which tasted like chemicals and totally sucked.  Dessert was a packet of mint chip chocolate cookies which was ten thousand times better than those yucky cakes which so often pretend to be real cakes in the meal tray.

An hour before we landed, the captain announced that turbulence was foreseen and breakfast (soba noodles and fresh fruit!) service was scraped!  He said this was to ensure the safety of the crew and passengers.  Personally I only felt A minute of centrifugal bumpiness, two minutes tops, not the long-lasting and life-threatening turbulence he scared us with.  But, whatever you say, Chief.  Did they have to throw out all the soba noodles and fruit?  Waaah. 

The plane touched down at 5:45 pm and idled for 30 minutes on the tarmac before we deplaned.  The earliest local train out of Narita departed at 7:30 pm and we didn't get to Ueno (kanji) till 8:50 pm.  We ate ramen there and dragged our tired bodies home in steady rain.  We went to bed close to midnight.  KL went straight to work the next day at 7 am.  He is Superman.


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