Robotics, Engineering, and the Future of Cities in Japan
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On Their Way after a canceled Flight...
A huge thank you to Mr. Choubaralian and Ms. Daves for working to get the flights sorted and the group in the Air! And managed to get pizza delivered to terminal 4 as they waited to board their flight to London!..
Yesterday was Wednesday, July 3rd, and we arrived at Haneda airport in Tokyo at around 5:30pm.
As we were waiting at the airport, many of us noticed that even the bottle caps were drastically different than ours at home, providing some frustration.
After that, we went through Japanese customs, where we discovered that the process was a little different than back in the U.S. We first had to fill out some questions on an online form, the proceed to a small machine that asked for our passports and a QR code that linked to the form we filled out. Using that, the machine would tell us where we should go, so the security officers could check out passport and confirm our identities.
After we got through customs, we met up with our EF tour guide, and after a short intermission, we got on our bus. Although it took a little while to get to the hotel from the airport, it was very interesting being immersed in this new culture, and the view on the way was beautiful.
After we dropped our bags off at the hotel, we went over to a food court where we split up and all got food.
When we got back, we were able to explore the hotel a little bit. Our room was pretty cozy, and the balcony view was beautiful.
krish and Caden came to our room and told us a story about how Krish was trying to use the bathroom and he couldn't find the flush, so he pressed the button with the shower on it and water started to go everywhere in the toilet, after he tried to press stop, the bidet turned on and that made the whole bathroom wet which he had to clean up after.
(Locking Ishaan in the balcony)
With all of us on less than 10 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, we decided to skip breakfast and we met our tour guide named Mahmooh, and we headed out on our impromptu trip to central London on the Heathrow Express, which was delayed by around 10 minutes. In the words of Manny, “we went across the Atlantic, and nothing has changed!”
The trip passed many famous stations such as bond street and Paddington. After getting off the Waterloo station on the tube, we walked towards the London Eye. There we split up into two groups to get lunch (with a particular chicken sandwich was the most popular amongst us), and then we split into 2 groups and rode the London Eye, seeing lots of famous buildings like Big Ben!
We still had some time and many of us went into the gift shops nearby. As per London tradition however, the rain made a visit to the neighborhood and we retreated to the nearest building and we were stuck inside yet again. However, some of us took a walk to the Westminster Bridge and the local shops and attractions. After much deliberation, the chaperones decided to not extend our activities there and go straight to the airport the same way we arrived to Waterloo station.
Furthermore, we moved from terminal 3 to terminal 2 which had a more modern and open layout. At 4:37, we said goodbye to our tour guide Mahmooh and proceeded to the TSA checkpoint. Many people were disgruntled by the fact that every single tube of liquid was tested, even ones less than 100mL. When we settled down, we ate some more substantial food than candy and waited for our flight.
At 6:15, we checked in for our flight for Tokyo, Japan… finally!
Hopefully, there won’t be any more delays!
Written by Garrett Yu and Liz Burnell!
Quote of the day: “You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.” -Al Capone
Day 0: Before the beginning of the post, I just want to let
you all know that we are not actually prisoners. I just treat this as such
because we were stuck at the airport for 13 hours due to our 9:00 AM flight
being cancelled and us having to get a different flight 10 hours later. I want
to give a huge shoutout to Ms. Choy, Mr. Wan, Ms. Daves, and Mr. Choubaralian
for all their efforts to make the best of this situation and they deserve a lot
of credit. – Gavin Frank
Now we begin.
We head to the airport despite knowing that our first prison transfer flight was cancelled. While we are there, the lead wardens Mr. Choubaralian and Ms. Daves are trying to find a way to get to our end transfer point in Tokyo. About two hours after our arrival, Mr. Choubaralian and Ms. Daves come to us with news: they have got a new flight, but we must wait until 7:00 PM. We are still in Terminal 7 at this point but prepare to head to the JFK air train to Terminal 4 as that is where the new flight is. Before we leave, we all get a group picture, shown in the picture below.
Once we get to Terminal 4, we sit around until 3:30 PM, getting pizza delivered to us during the waiting period as highlighted by the four pictures below.
There was also a brief period of yard time where Mr. Wan
took us prisoners outside to take a lap around the terminal as shown in the
next picture. The two patches of sun were very liberating to us inmates.
At about 3:30 PM, we left to go check in, we got to go
through a different area as we were a large group. We get to our gate at around
4:15 PM where we waited while getting food to prepare for the flight. We
finally got on the plane at 6:38 PM and waited until about 8:15 PM before the
plane took off and began heading to London.
