Day 5 - Back to Narita To Meet Friends

Day 5 started with us heading back to Narita on the Narita Express train with Winn and Steve. Our plan was to spend a few hours in the town of Narita before heading to the airport around 3PM to meet Devin, who was arriving.

Our trip to Narita was relatively uneventful until we reached the airport, which is a necessary stop on the way to the town. Once we exited the train, we went up the stairs and were forced to cross a gate by a rather surly guard. We wasted a solid 40 minutes looking for the train to Narita-shi (the town of Narita) before finally learning it would depart from the same platform where we had arrived. We finally reached the town of Narita around 12:30PM, just in time for lunch. This meant we could head over to my favorite ramen shop, Ramen Bayashi for a bowl of Chili Ramen, which is a delicious and spicy bowl of soup. We all ordered the Chili Ramen, and shared 2 orders of Gyoza, while also drinking some Sapporo beer.

My bowl of chili ramen, topped with pork chashu.

The group after our sake tasting.

Sated and much happier about 30 minutes later, we left the restaurant for a very reasonable 5300 yen and headed down the hill to explore. Unfortunately, while we were dining the weather had begun to turn and rain was starting to fall, so we all forked out an additional 400 yen for umbrellas before continuing our walk.

Our first stop was a local sake brewery, where we sampled some local sake and pickles, before stopping by a booth serving traditional Japanese dorayaki, which are pancakes with red bean filling. These were nice, but not quite to the taste of Winn, Steve or myself, so we only ate about half. Just down the hill from the dorayaki shop, is one of my favorite Japanese stores - Sugi Bee Garden. This chain is immensely popular here, and sells fruit flavored honey that can be used in cooking, baking or drinks (the most common use). Sugi Bee Garden operates many apiaries throughout Japan, and feed the bees a diet of high quality local flowers in Kumamoto before infusing the honey with fruit. We purchased about 8 large bottles of honey, in flavors like Yuzu, Mango, Blueberry and Raspberry, and had to complete some tax and export paperwork before we could finish checking out. While we did so, Lauren managed to befriend the store staff and explained who we all were and where we were from. At this stage we had nearly run out of time to explore, so we hiked back up the hill to the train station, where Steve, Winn and Lauren sat down to wait.

I kept moving, passing through the train station and into the newer part of Narita, where I visited a Japan Post office to ship the honey and some other souvenirs back home - our secret to traveling with only a carry on sized bag.

My dinner at Roast Beef Ohno

Akihabara's Yodabashi camera by night.

After shipping the good home, I met the group back at the station to head to the airport. As soon as we reached the atrium at the airport, Devin was exiting security, so we grabbed him and proceeded to get him a Suica card for the subway before buying tickets back into town.

Our friend Neil would be arriving about 90 minutes later and would meet us in town. We all agreed to meet for dinner at Roast Beef Ohno, a restaurant in Akihabara near Neil and Devin's hotel and headed that direction, which took about 2 hours. The meal at Roast Beef Ohno consisted of a bowl of rice topped with a generous helping of sliced roast beef, crowned with a pasteurized egg yolk. The meat is topped with Japanese mayonnaise and an onion sauce. We all devoured our meals before heading our separate ways to fall into bed.