Last Day …. Narita

 We decided to stay in Narita the night before our flight. Jane found some shops etc that she wanted to check out. Flight from Naha was late, train too far, cab! The Richmond Hotel Narita (where does she find these western named places?) is comfy but definitely a Japanese hotel. Quaint little room, small bath/shower and the ubiquitous bidet. A thought occurred to Jane the other day, ‘we should have documented all the different toilets and bidets we have seen in our travels’, or maybe not. I thought we should have brought samples of toilet paper from all the places, I guess we have our minds in the toilet a little too much!

The town is different than you expect. The airport is close so I guess we expected something like a commercial hotel filled tourist void. It is no such thing. It’s quaint, clean, older than expected and really quite lovely on a snowy morning.

There is a great market street, a beautiful temple/shrine and a lot of eel restaurants. You can watch them kill, gut and prepare the live eels for lunch, doesn’t get any fresher the alive 3 minutes ago. The eels are fresh water and live in the river and lakes nearby.  Trent was chicken to try but I tried a grilled eel sushi that has the special soy sauce, quite tasty.  




There is a temple was founded in 940 CE (that’s AD to us old people). Looks good. We didn’t go in as we hadn’t purified ourselves enough to feel comfortable.


There is a pagoda here as well, one of the first we’ve seen without some hoarding around it. It’s three stories and very old. Quite beautiful too.
Above is the first floor construction.

There is a very impressive side shrine as well. We made a wish at this one. Our last wish for this trip in Japan.


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