The Great Tokyo Adventure: Part 1

First things first - a huge CONGRATULATIONS to Jen who has posted several times in the comments here. She sold her first book to Silhouette Desire last week!! Go Jen! And another big huge congrats to a certain Playground Monitor who just made a sale to True Confessions Magazine!

Now, I promised you all a round-up of my trip to Tokyo, but this is one story that can't simply start with me at the reader party/lunch itself. (Before I continue, I want to say I had a fantabulous time, so don't think otherwise - I just found this sequence of events fairly hilarious and was actually laughing in disbelief half the time).

Carrying on.... It all began with a friend of mine (let's call her E) giving me a ride to the airport. I'm usually a public transport girl but the flight time was a bit close and I live a distance from the airport, so E graciously agreed to drive me up.

All was fairly normal until about halfway into the trip. At which point, I found a couple of candies from my bag and we began sucking on them. One important thing: these were not chewy candies. No tooth movement of any kind was involved. So we're driving along and I begin to realize that my candy was not disappearing. A tiny nugget of it stubbornly refused to melt down. And you know what? It didn't even taste like butterscotch anymore.

Giving up on the candy, I decided to take it out and see if I could sue the candy maker for putting stones in the candy *g* And that was when the following conversation took place (some parts have been fictionalized in the pursuit of a good story).

N: What the &#!?
E: Huh? What happened?
N: Look? It's a filling! My filling fell out.
E: What do you mean your filling fell out?
N: A big shiny hunk of metal from my tooth is now in my hand.
E: Oh man. That's huge.
N: I have a giant crater in my tooth.
E: Shall we go to the dentist?
N: We can't turn around! I have to catch my flight up to Tokyo!
E: But you have a big hole in your tooth.
N: It's okay, it's the root canal tooth. There's no feeling in it anyway.
E: Right.

(Remind me sometime to tell you the story of having to go to the dentist my first week in a brand new non-English speaking country and being told I needed a root canal)

But wait, there's more. So I finally get to the airport (filling carefully wrapped up and put away because I don't know the Japanese words for 'my filling fell out' so I'm planning to just show up with it), and what do I find? My flight has been delayed. Oh dear.

By the time I get to Tokyo, it's after nine, it's raining and I've missed the nifty airport bus that would've dropped me straight at the door to the hotel. Next bus? One hour later. Thankfully for my sanity, I'd been a good scout and printed out instructions to get to the hotel, so I took an earlier connecting bus, hopped onto the subway and found my way to the street where the hotel was supposed to be.

Lots and lots of hotels all around. Can't see the name of mine. Crap. Relieved when I find a map on a nearby wall, I'm staring at it when this nice Japanese lady smiles at me and finds herself being asked if she knows where my hotel is. At which point she starts laughing and points across the road. Yes. It was right there. In. Front. Of. My. Face. But in my defence - there was a GIANT tree covering the name of the hotel so how was I supposed to know?!

So I walk in looking like something the cat dragged in and proceed to check in. Except the girl can't find my reservation. I'm about to terrify her with the hole in my tooth when I realize that though she pretends to speak English, she does in fact only speak particular phrases and quite likely can't understand my mumbles. So I write out my name for her and five minutes later, I'm in my wonderful lovely room looking at this view.

Okay, so do you want to know the rest of the Amazing Tokyo Adventure today or shall I make you wait till tomorrow? Muwahahaha!