How I got to LA: @Narita

(Continued from this post)

Just after we got out of the airport at Narita, we took a free shuttle bus to Hotel Nikko Narita, the Japan Airlines owned hotel, where you were offered a free night's stay for transit. On the road, I see lot's of bikes on the side walks, I even spotted a beautiful white Specialized, which doesn't seem to be locked...


Because I'm going back to Taiwan later then my family, our tickets aren't reservered together, and thus, I was arranged to have a room to my self.

It's a nice small room, but the bath room is big, since it took half the space of my room.

As always, we got on the free hotel bus bound to Narita city, and went to the small city for dinner. A tiny japanese Ramen shop is always our first stop: Ramen Bayashi (ラメンばやし, which means Japanese noodles master). They serve delicious ramen and fried dumplings(餃子/ぎょうざ). Although expensive (about 700yen a bowl), the noodles are very good. It's slightly chewy but still soft (咬起來很Q), and you'll know that it's great noodles just by the feel of bitting on it. I like the Tenmen (天麺, vegetable noodles), which has a simple salt based soup with a generous ammount of fresh, crisp vegetables. You could actually hear that sound "crunch" when you chew. The down side of it is that the soup is different this year. Last time I went, the Tenmen is lightly flavered, but this time, it's a little over salty. My sister's fried rice and dumplings are also good but very salty.


After dinner, we walked around, going to the supermarket to get Japanese big peachs and Japanese instant noodles(which, as I realised a week later, is also very salty). We also went to a book store, to see what comics and novels they read. The Japanese verson of "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" are in easily spoted spots, they are pocket sized, and each cut into 3 volumns, nice to bring around.

Then, it's back to the Hotel. Since our flight is in the afternoon, we were planning on a more in depth tour of Narita next morning...

(My roommate just turned off the lights, to be continued...)