Moving Out: Sayonara Hamamatsu

The day after my birthday I started really packing up my stuff and throwing things away. Though I did take a break to go on one last bike ride with Jonathan.

We just went to the beach which isn't very pretty, but it was still nice to just ride around. 

We were going to also bike on a trail through the woods for a little bit but discovered that it was gone. :(

I had a lot of stuffed animals to send home, including my giant Rilakkuma. Rilakkuma was too big to mail to the US so I had to unstuff his head. Poor Rilakkuma. :(

I also unstuffed several other stuffed animals so that they could fit in the same box. I'm going to have to buy a lot of stuffing once that box arrives! Though I did use some of the stuffing as filler in another box that I sent home.

Once I was done with all of my classes I threw away most of the teaching materials I had made. It was kind of sad to throw it all away!

My last day was March 20th. I'll write more about my last days of school in another post. I wrote some notes at school and don't have them with me right now so that post will have to come later.

I left school after lunch and drove straight to the car place to return my car. So sad! I miss my Japanese car. It was so easy to drive and see around it. I'm short and I loved that I didn't have to pull the seat all the way forward to reach the pedals.

My IC (a person hired by Interac to help with stuff) met me there and then we went to the bank to close my account. Then we went to my apartment and cleaned while the gas, electric, and water companies came by to shut off utilities and collect final payments. A couple of them were quite a bit more than I expected. :( But it wasn't too bad I guess.

After we finished cleaning, I locked the door and dropped my keys through the mail slot. Sayonara my cute little apartment across the street from a mall. :(

Before walking away I finally remembered to take a picture of the plate above the lock. It was upside down, lol.

Then my IC drove me to Jonathan's apartment. We helped him a bit and then our ICs drove us to Hamamatsu Station and dropped us off. Jonathan and I got dinner from a konbini. While I was waiting for Jonathan to get his food I took one last picture of Hamamatsu.

We then bought our shinkansen tickets to Tokyo. We had to wait about an hour for the train because reserved seats on the earlier ones were sold out. With all our luggage we really wanted to have seats.

In the waiting room we ate our dinner. I had a strawberry sandwich and tomato garlic Pringles. 

I had some small snacks (green tea Crunch bars and some sort of cookie with nuts) and finished my drink on the train. The rich brown ginger ale was stronger than usual ginger ale. Sooooo good!

When we arrived in Tokyo we had to switch to a couple smaller trains to get to our hotel. Luggage hadn't been too bad on the shinkansen but on the local trains it was much more annoying. We both had two suitcases and backpacks. But people were so super nice and several people helped me with my luggage getting off trains and up and down stairs.

At our hotel I tried to use my Toyoko Inn points because I thought I had enough to get one night free but something had happened with my points and I only had one point instead of 10. I had 19 points when I went to Sapporo and used 10 for a free room for one night. Then I earned one more for the second night. But I guess they accidentally erased all of my points. The people at the front desk called to the hotel in Sapporo to ask about it but I couldn't really understand their answer. :( It was annoying to have unexpected expenses like higher bills and having to pay more for the hotel when I wanted to be able to shop in Tokyo, but oh well. I still ended up having a great time in Tokyo!