Well, I guess that’s it. Sayōnara Nipon, it was nice to be with you! In this respect, I would also like to thank Nicolas, with whom I didn’t always get along, but who was otherwise an extremely nice fellow traveller. In general, it would have been smarter if we had taken the time to get to know each other better before the tour.
Apart from that, the tour will stay in my memory for a very long time. Here in Japan, I visited my 100th theme park and rode my 500th roller coaster. All this without ever having been to the United States. That may not sound so special now, but it’s not a given with the best will in the world. And it’s not an omission, because the rides in Europe and Japan are generally more than respectable. It also shows once again that you can somehow get by without knowing the language. But the Japanese are also very patient and helpful in this respect. Moreover, I have never felt so safe in my life. Of course, it would be wrong to think that there is no crime, because the Detective Conan mangas show this in an unparalleled attention to detail, but it is significantly less or exists in other forms. Nevertheless, I never had to worry about my wallet, something that would quickly lead to its loss, especially in Germany. This was demonstrated at the bus stop at Frankfurt airport, where a muscular smoker was smoking far outside the marked area and, when asked what that was all about, immediately wanted to punch me in the face. Welcome to Germany, he was probably from Offenbach.
On the last day of our tour, after visiting Yomiuriland, we headed for the Yokohama Cosmo World theme park. However, as we had made one or two changes to the tour itinerary beforehand, we were unexpectedly faced with closed doors here. Since the hotel where we left our suitcases after check-out was within reach, this was not so bad. So we decided to dine in a Hawaiian restaurant in a nearby mall. Besides delicious food and good prices, it also offered live music. A great, albeit somewhat quiet, end to the tour in Yokohama. With our suitcases in our luggage, we then took the monorail to Haneda airport, where the plane took us to Seoul that night. Once there, we had to wait a few hours before the flight to Frankfurt took off. After arriving there, we quickly said goodbye to each other and I took the ICE to Hanover, but this time much more uneventfully.
