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After having no success at different venues (airport and bicycle shops) for securing a bicycle box, we had to revert to our own resourcefulness. We managed to build a custom bicycle box with some cardboard boxes from a recycling bin and new boxes purchased at the airport. In the end, we felt relieved and proud of our bicycle box. With the tandem disassembled and packaged in our box, we started to focus on our Tokyo visit. Our sightseeing proved to be quite challenging given the high temperature and level of humidity. Our clothes often got soaked in sweat by simply walking to the train stations. Needless to say, we were extremely grateful we had opted to shorten our cycling journey from 10 to 2 days after our Hokkaido visit. Jenny and I were totally dumbfounded to see how Japanese folks did not break a sweat while wearing long sleeve tops and thick jeans. Even when we tried to alternate our sightseeing with visits of air-conditioned shopping malls, we still got soaked in sweat. On most days in Tokyo, the temperature reached 35C which translated to 44C with the humidity. Overall, we spent over 10 weeks (71 days) in different parts of Japan. Tomorrow as we embark on our visit of family in Shanghai, we will likely not post to our blog until our return home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As we expected the hotel’s breakfast was quite chaotic but surprisingly the food was well layed out and organized by staff. After breakfast, we opted to visit two bicycle shops in the town of Narita in the hope of securing a bicycle box. We took our hotel’s free airport shuttle to the airport’s terminal 2 where we took a city bus to the Aeon Shopping mall. We were deeply disappointed by our 2 bicycle shop’s visit. The best outcome we got was to salvage some broken and partially wet boxes from one of the bicycle shop’s recycling bin. We took the first scheduled bus back (12:30pm) to terminal 2 where we decided to purchase 4 of the largest boxes available at the packing counter. We returned to our hotel with all those box parts by using their free airport shuttle. In the early afternoon, we spent 2 hours building our own custom bicycle box and then spent another 1.5 hours disassembling and packaging the tandem into the box. Towards the end of the tandem disassembling, I unfortunately strained my back. By the end, we were quite relieved and in the meantime proud of our creative box customization. All of the tandem parts and accessories were snugly stored in the box. We left the bicycle box with the hotel reception for safe keeping until our return on July 22nd for our flight to Shanghai. In the evening, we visited a restaurant from a nearby hotel but we felt it was too expensive. We continued our walk to the airport’s terminal 3 where we had dinner from different food court restaurants.<\/p>\n\n\n
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