Tokyo: Expedited, early, departure

This day, or our final full day in Tokyo, was meant for some shopping, a final dining experience, and packing and preparing for our departure the next day. It was not to be.

When I woke up, I had an email message from my travel agent in the US, Lets Fly Cheaper. The message said that an equipment change was planned for our flight the next day, and the replacement equipment did not have the premium economy seats we had booked. Of course, we would not be upgraded.

We might have gotten money back, but it was more important to us to have the better seats. The email had come in a few hours before I saw it, and due to time zone differences, I could not use my agent’s services to help out. I immediately got on the phone with our Japanese agency and with JAL. I spent nearly two hours on the phone.

This is also the only time we realized that not being able to use a cell phone to make calls was a (small) problem. Luckily for us, we were in a hotel, so we could use the hotel phone facilities. These always cost more than one wants, but they get the job done. Still not worth paying for the cell phone voice capability, in this case.

The final result was that we had to leave today, or a day earlier than planned. Since we had no accommodations to stay an extra day, we opted to leave today. We were unable to get our private driver, which was planned for the next day and rescheduled for today, so we worked with the hotel staff to arrange a large enough taxi to take us to Narita later.

Once things were arranged, we had breakfast and came back to pack and get ready for departure. It was kind of fortuitous that we had no officially planned activity this day, and so we only lost out on some shopping and one more meal. The drive to NRT was uneventful, as was the flight back home.

Once back home, we managed to arrange a refund of one day at the hotel and the prepaid private driver fee, so overall the financial impact was minimal.

We had a most excellent adventure!