Hitting the road……

So today we said goodbye to Tokyo and headed to Narita to pick up the camper van. For some time emails had been passing back and forth to the company, some understood and some not. I was quite excited to finally meet who we had been corresponding with.

What a difference a few days has made and doing the return journey towards the airport we definitely felt more like pros, getting from a to b with ease.

Getting into Narita I had to ring them so got to grips with a Japanese pay phone.

Haven’t used a pay phone for years and it was lovely that the ubiquitous smell of piss and stale cigarettes that I remember from the UK was not the case here.

We got picked up and Tashimi(?) was explaining how the weather was very different in Japan and had been so for the last 5 years. He said summers were hotter, wetter and more humid. The summer is the rainy season but normally its a few days of rain and then back to dry, warm weather. However this year just before we had arrived it had rained relentlessly for 31 days and now although dry, the temperatures were much higher than the past.

It took just under an hour and a half for Toshimi to go through everything in painstaking detail. Who to move the fridge, what the battery level should be, how to use the ipad etc. Etc.

However the one question I had omitted to ask was whether it was manual or automatic – unfortunately it is automatic. So definitely not having the wherewithal to drive it, Pete has taken over that job.

The downside was that we had to drive back through Tokyo. We had wanted to avoid toll roads (of which there are many) but Toshimi advised us to bite the bullet as it would be a more direct route, 2 hours as opposed to 5!

We didn’t have many delays going through Tokyo.

When we did it was positive as we got a chance to see some interesting buildings etc.

We were heading towards the Hakone area. It’s legal in Japan to stay in service areas for the night, theses places are called michi no eki and there are well over a thousand of them in Japan.

The idea of service stations makes you think of grey soulless places but it is very different here. We are in a small place at the top of a mountain with stunning views. A farmer delivered fresh veg earlier to the shop/cafe we bought some to make tea.

There are other camper vans with people from France and Germany. Although the ones from France are funny as they have matching kimono dressing gowns on and are currently making what looks like a 3 course meal!