Tsukuba Monogatari: Seventeenth post
Jennifer told me it took about an hour to drive to Narita, so I allowed two hours, figuring I’d probably get lost a few times, get stuck behind a slow truck, or both. I also allowed a half hour to get from the parking lot to the terminal, 1.5 hours to check in, and a half hour to exchange some currency. Then, after getting up this morning and taking 10 minutes to pack, there was nothing else to do, so I figured I might as well get an early start.
There was no traffic, and I didn’t get lost. As a result, I arrived at Narita Airport incredibly early and checked in. Since I did not need 3 hours and 45 minutes to buy Hong Kong dollars, I had plenty of time to become intimately acquainted with Narita Airport.
Narita Airport has: a Daiichi Kangyo Bank, a Fuji Bank, and a Bank of Tokyo. There is no Sumitomo Bank. A Sumitomo Bank cash card is not worth the plastic it’s made of at Narita Airport. I had been hoping to find one, since I forgot that today was a national holiday and all banks are closed except at the airport. Automatic tellers (called “cash corners” in Japan) are also closed.
Cash corners are not open 24 hours, as they are in the States. They close at night, on Sundays, on holidays, and they are only open between 9:30 am and 2 pm on Saturdays. The one thing I have been unable to adapt to here is cash corner hours. I cannot train myself to remember that I can’t just run to the money machine at any time of night. This is proving to be an effective means of cost control, as it usually doesn’t occur to me that I’m out of funds until 2:05 on a Saturday afternoon.
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