Day 3: Sapporo to Tokyo

It's the day we are to fly out from Sapporo, so we decided to try out the hotel buffet breakfast. It was also convenient and minimized travelling and other logistical challenges. The family met at the restaurant (I was last because I let everyone wash up before me. And I couldn't get out of bed - yawns) and it was a simple but sufficiently filling spread of Western (tomatoes, egg-cooking station, sausages) and Japanese (miso, pickles, Jap-egg tamago) options... I was feeling pretty stuffed after the jolly feasting the past few days... not as if that deterred me from eating to the point of full. Hahaha.

K takes a wefie - you can make out the husband's tiny head

Anecdote: the restaurant is located at the basement and because I was the last to go for breakfast, it was the husband who brought the children down. In the lift, he asked the kids, "what does B stand for" and our 5yo boy chimed loudly "BREAKFAST!" -LOL- gotta loveeee the things kids say!

B for breakfast.

After breakfast, we split up to grab our luggage to the lobby to check out. The husband and I encountered some room issues this morning -
(1) our safe door was a bit stuck wonky. Thankfully, it was resolved by calling concierge.

Note: when I told them our safe door was stuck, the Japanese did not process the words "safe door" properly. They came to my room with a door stopper/set of master keys. These tools were not helpful at all. Thankfully, they saw the real problem and managed to open the safe door for us. Yay.
(2) the husband we misplaced the vehicle valet card and when you need to step out of the hotel room with 3 giant luggages, and 2 children and 5 hand carry pieces (only day 3 and we have grown extra bags...), it was a bit troublesome to be searching through pockets and bag pockets to try to locate a tiny piece of paper. But hooray, we found it!
Check out was smooth, and it was a rewind of day one, as we retraced our steps from the hotel, back to the car rental mart, bus-ed back to the airport terminal and can I say that it was such a relief to check in our baggages.
At the airport, we had time for lunch; so we settled down at the food court. There were many stalls selling different types of food and we did our beers BYO style (the sister went to buy it from a supermart) and heartily added to our beer and calorie count.

View from the food court

One for the road - goodbye Sapporo (backdrop prop is not by accident)

The flight from Sapporo to Tokyo was short, and the children requested to sit together again. However, I felt that they needed to keep their brains active and the husband and I took one child each to talk to/be with. I spent the hour+ doing some math problems with J.
We arrived in Haneda airport in the afternoon, and the plan (credit: the sister and her busband!) was for us to commute to our accommodation by bus. We had two things to accomplish:
1) Get the bus tickets for everyone
2) Get the 3-day train pass for everyone
3) Catch the bus and make it to our home
We started off with (1). We stood in line (remember, we have 6 adults, 2 children and a ton of luggage to wheel and to carry!) to get our bus tickets. Just as we were joining this queue, the BIL said that this was the line to join and I jokingly said "it's great that you know Jap and can direct us". We then discussed briefly that the bus we were going to take was coming at 5.10pm.
Just then, a friendly lady in uniform approached us and asked if we needed help. I said, yes, we are wanting to get tickets... she pointed to a vending machine about 5metres away with no queue and said she will help us. The human line was pretty long, so we decided to go with the shorter queue option at the machine. She also referred to a timetable she held in her hand and said, "the bus is coming in 5 minutes" - my brain went into overdrive mode!
I left the sister and her busband to purchase the tickets, I went to gather the parents, the husband and the children (they were already scattered browsing in some random shop!) and we started charging our way to the bus-stop because the bus is arriving in 5 minutes! It was just at the point before we began charging, that the lady clarified and said that the bus is only coming in 20minutes... at 5.10pm... that I realised I was holding my breath. -insert appropriate face-
Nothing has really changed, we just made our way to the bus stop in a more elegant manner. Ha! And this is also where the running joke started - that indeed, the BIL was very accurate in the info he dished out about the bus station/timings so the BIL must know Japanese, indeed!
While waiting for the bus, at the bus-stop with our bus tickets in hand (item 1 ticked off the list), the sister and her busband ventured to tackle task (2). They left to get/enquire about the tickets and in this time that they were away from the rest of us (6 adults, 2 children and a ton of luggage), I went to pee and the father was one anxious parent as he walked up and down, sticking his neck out to look for the sister and her busband. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief when we were reunited. Turns out that the train pass was only available at the main airport terminal; so task (2) remain unchecked.


Undaunted, our bus arrived as punctually as can be and up we went on this bus (6 adults, 2 children and a ton of luggage). Task (3) checked!
The bus was a regular bus ride, so most people dozed off; while some of us kept chatting about nothing much in particular. The plan was for us to get to Tokyo Disneyland's main bus station and it was with delight that we disembarked the bus! I had nearly forgotten about this, but the sister's blog mentioned it and I need to also say that when I was getting off the bus, I was -ahem- so strong in lifting a drawstring bag off the ledge above our seats in the bus, that the bag opened and out flew cups of instant noodles. Besides being mortified that my food is flying, it was made only slightly better that the noodles nearly, but did not hit this man who was innocently trying to make his way off the bus. I had to pick up the *%$^ cup noodles and accompanying wooden disposable chopsticks... *I seem to have some affinity with falling cup noodle
The bus station kinda looked like what I remembered it to be, though I was not certain of my bearings entirely. All I did was follow the BIL who was leading the circus comprising 8 adults, 2 children and a ton of luggage (not all luggage are created equal - inside joke). We had to loop around the station to get across a road, that led us to another bus terminal where we needed to take a bus to our hood. In the midst of crossing this road, part of us made it, part of us had to run to make it, part of us had to jay-walk to make it and one little girl did not make it across the road. Thankfully, she was too stunned calm enough to stay on her the side of the road and waited for the next green man before the sister went over to fetch her. I must be honest and say that I was in camp 'jaywalkers' (along with the husband and our luggages and the boy) so we totally missed out witnessing this story of the girl who got left behind.


After making it across one road safely, we then found the bus stop that will bring us to our home. Of course, it was at the other end of the terminal so off we went (8 adults, 2 children and a ton of luggage).
Anecdote from the past: It's an open secret that on our last family trip (back in 2013), among 3 adults, 2 children and a small ton of luggages, there were some harrowing street experiences. This was a common reference that the sister and I will dig up to joke about and our benchmark was "as long as we're not in as bad a state as then..."
So, in the queue, the sister and I kept wiggling our brows at each other and we were giggling as we referenced past-street-horror-story; and it seemed as if we may be in an ungreat state as we witnessed the long queue at the bus line.... but somehow, we made it. We made it on the bus, across 4 bus stops and made it off the bus. Everyone say, Hooray!
We had to take a short walk around a bend to our apartment and we were such a big cluster, it took us separate lift rides to get to our apartment; but... we made it! Applause.


The apartment was really nice! (Credit to the sister and her busband for sponsoring this stay!) It felt cosy and clean and it only took us 30 minutes to figure out where everyone wanted to reside. It was beginning to get dark and dinner beckoned, so we decided to take a stroll in our hood in search for food.
We settled on this place that reminded me of Yoshinoya, except we ordered food from a vending machine. How complex was this? Apparently, very.

How many does it take to figure out how to buy dinner?

After a relatively simple dinner, we strolled back (3minutes) to our home. But, not before we hit the friendly neighbourhood mart just at the base of the block.

Priorities

Corridor leading to our home

Home - we made it messy homely real quick!

The concern we had about our airbnb apartment was that it only had one toilet. Strangely, all the airbnb apartments we researched only provided one toilet. In our case, the toilet was huge. That made it better; but we all kinda started a courteous system where we'll let the kids go first, then the father or mother, then the sister or I, then the men didn't really seem to be in a rush to get clean at all; so it all worked out well! It felt really nice to have a home to cosy up in. It is different from us living in our own hotel rooms. Again, credit to the sister and her busband for this excellent choice of home stay
On this night, we huddled in the living room together and listened to music together and had some snacks together. Tomorrow, would be Disney day!


Read about coming to Japan day, our first full day 1, and 2 here.