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Finally departing...
 The last few weeks we tried to annoy Sean a bit by making funny
remarks about Celtic, his favorite football club. At one point in
time we were planning to welcome him at the airport wearing
Glasgow Rangers shirts but we could not find them unfortunately.
So Maurice ripped a picture of the Rangers team from the internet
and photoshopped our faces in. After sending it to Sean by e-mail,
a furious reply came within no-time :-)))
After quite an amount of stress we found ourselves finally on
Schiphol airport. Seans flight was late and was planned to arrive
only 5 minutes before the flight to Tokyo would depart. Frank
warned him in the morning and Sean quickly grabbed his things
together and rushed to Aberdeen airport. Luckily he could take a
flight earlier and arrived on time wearing this Celtic shirt of
course..
Laughing, we hopped on board of the PH-BFG.
The
longest day.
 Our
friend Koji and his companion Kenichi were waiting for us at the
airport and showed us what Japanese hospitality meant. They had
arranged 5 stepladders for us and helped us to get to our rental
car and to get a mobile phone which was very convenient.
Koji lead the way to Shimofusa where we arrived an hour later. As
it was Saturday, there was no flying activity but we could see
some Orions and a SH-60 standing outside. After this, Koji went
home and Kenichi showed us the way to Hyakuri where he lives
nearby. At this airbase a private air show would be held the
following day. When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised by the
amount of aircraft parked outside. The whole platform was full
with Eagles, Phantoms (including some of Naha ..) T-4's, a
Hercules, C-1 etc. A pleasant way to become acquainted with the
new aircraft types and squadrons. Suddenly the runway lights were
switched on and the fire truck headed for the runway. Let's turn
on the scanner: After a few minutes a T-4 from Hamamatsu came in.
 It
was already rather late when we left Hyakuri and we still had to
drive
300 kilometres to Sendai, further up
north. There was only one little problem: None of us did get any
sleep during the past night and we were already running around for
more then 24 hours and driving with your eyes closed was a bit of
a problem. Franks stomach could not cope anymore and he had to run
for the bushes at the parking lot. Finally we reached Sendai and
we went searching for the Youth Hostel we already had booked while
we were at home. But although we were equipped with a map and even
a GPS, we could not find it. After two hours of searching and
asking around we decided to phone the hotel. To our surprise the
lady who answered the phone offered to pick us up at a nearby
station. Within 15 minutes we were finally at the place we could
sleep. A very nice hostel which turned out to be the best we had
found during the whole trip. Leather slippers at the door, warmed
toilet seats and..... a hot tub. No matter how exhausted we were,
we had to try that out. The bath had enough room for two persons
so Arnold and Frank went first and Fred and Mo right after that.
Sean would have his go the following morning. This felt good and
all burnt-red and wrinkled we crashed into our beds.
GPS Coordinates for Sendai Dochuan Youth Hostel:
N 38 12 731, E 140 52 955 |
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