Without a doubt, this was a day of goodbyes and farewells. I had to wake up very early, the earliest, in fact, out of my ten nights there. There was no choice since I had a plane to catch. A quick check with the weather forecasts on TV showed the New Chitose Airport operating as per normal after massive amount of flight cancellations yesterday due to the heavy snowfall. After washing up myself, I sat at the all so familiar table now and hesitated for a while before I ate my breakfast. It was gonna be the last breakfast and I knew instantly that I am so gonna miss it after this homestay. I will miss everything in this house in truth.

Everything was a little rushed though as we cetainly didn't want to miss the flight. Up went the luggages into the car and off we went to Teine Station. The ride to the station suddenly passed in a flash. I wished it could have been longer, I guess its just the same old feeling you get when you are reluctant to leave a place. I met up the rest of the Teine-Go-Nin and their host mamas at the station. We had to take a train to the airport as the weather made it tough for the hosts to drive us to the Airport itself. When everyone arrrived, it was time to bid farewell to our hospitable and ever caring hosts. Inevitably, the girls had tears flooding their eyes as they hugged and whispered reluctant goodbyes to each other. The guys managed to keep the tap closed even though the feelings were mutual, no one wanted to leave.

We managed to drag our unwilling feet towards the gantry and into the station. We looked back and forth from the gantry all the way to the escalator to wave to our hosts who became smaller as we went further away from them. And so, that was the last we saw of them, for now at least :-)

The ride to the Airport was alright, a little cramped as we had luggages all around us but we managed to be seated for the whole journey. When we finally arrived at New Chitose Airport, so many familiar faces once again appeared in front of us. We knew more than definitely that we will have so much to tell each other about our own homestays. Some of them were chauffeured by their hosts, some came the same way as us. Once again. Kenny took up the responsibility of checking everyone in. We passed him our flight itineraries and we were told to go to a group check in counter 2 levels away. We made our way there and it was all settled in a jiffy. Of course there had to be a farewell photo with the banner. We interrupted a lot of people while doing that though, it was pretty funny to see people ventured into our photo taking space and hurried away when they realised.

After more goodbyes with our Japanese friends, we went inside. Guess what we saw again?? Its the Pokemon Plane! But this time that plane isn't going to send us to Tokyo. It was a quick flight and familiar sights greeted us at Haneda Airport. This was the end of the trip for many of us except, I believe to be 8 of us who extended our stay in Tokyo. 6 of us will be hanging out together while another 2 have other plans in mind. And so, now we have our Tokyo-Roku-Nin, although we didn't really use that term on ourselves. We, consists of Kenny, Shea Nee, June, Junlong, Wai Kit and yours truly. It was a familiar group to me, with 3 of the Teine group and Kenny which was so easy to get along with and fun as well and also Shea Nee whom I've chatted quite a bit with during our flight from Singapore to Tokyo.

After making sure the rest of the gang boarded the bus bound for Narita Airport, we ourselves set off for Asakusa, where our hostel is located. We checked the Metro line map and also with the airport staffs to get ourselves started. It was pretty straightforward and you'll get used to the metro system in no time if you take some time to comprehend how the interchanges work. Its quite similar to London Metro in a way.

Ok, and now for the gruelling part. We arrived at Asakusa Station and made our way out of the train. To our extreme horror, there was no elevator at all to send us up to the ground level! And to make things worse, there wasn't any escalator as well! Oh my goodness. We had to carry all of our 30kg lugagges up the staircases, about 7, 8 flights of them, and it is extremely tiring! I exchanged my luggage with June as mine was lighter. Finally we saw light as we conquered the last flight of steps and out of the station. That wasn't the end still, with the map Kenny printed out, we recced our way all the way to our hostel which was located pretty inside of the whole Asakusa area.

The hostel, Sakura Hostel to be precise, was alright. The lobby was filled with travellers from all over the world doing varoius stuffs like using the computer terminals, chatting, playing video games or eating. There were quite a few vending machines around too. The staffs at the check in counter were pretty conversant in English as well, that made things easier. The room we got were 8 shared, it wasn't exactly spacious but the beds aren't too bad. Double deckers with a soft soft mattress each. We had to lay our own bedsheets and pillow cases though. We made one of the beds our luggage hold area which really helped saved the already little space we had, for walking.

We spent a while deciding who gets which bed, the girls, being girls, naturally took a while to make up their mind. The guys were more or less alright with anything exceot me I think. LOL. I wanted the lower bed! Once settled, we settled down and started to think of what we want to do next. It was already dark by the way and so we just decided to explore our area for the night and find a spot for dinner.

Asakusa was a morning and afternoon place, it was evident from the fact that almost everywhere was closed even though it was just evening time. It was quite silent and empty as we walked along the streets of Asakusa. We found a Soba shop and satisfied our famished stomachs there. It was pretty nice. The way to purchase your food works like this - you had to decide what you want from the menu and photos or in some cases, a live size model of the food, and then proceed to a machine to buy the ticket for the food you want, then you pass it to the chef at the counter and, depending on your restaurant, you either get served or you have to self collect. This was the way a lot of small eateries work in Tokyo as we found out in the course of our stay.

After the re-energising meal, we continued to walk around the area. We came to this junction where we could see the golden Asahi "s***" thingy on top of a building some distance away. Kenny was quite into this structure from the beginning. Only god knows why. LOL! Ok, with the new group of people now, there was a slight change in the order. Wai Kit, the original cam-w****, has now found a new partner in June who apparently shared the same interest. It was clearly proven as in the end, there had the most gigabytes of photos!

That was how our first day in Tokyo went. We went back to our hostel to wash up and rest and also to plan for the next day. I left everything to the rest as they seems to already know about the place even before coming. Looks like I really need to do some homework next time.