Thursday, June 29, 2006. I got up early to go to breakfast and then a group of us headed out to ride the Tokyo Monorail. It was my idea, so I was the "tour guide." We went into the subway during rush hour and got to finally experience what we had all read about. There were men who worked for the subway wearing white gloves. There were pairs of them and they each stood on the side of the car doors. They allowed everyone to get off the train car, then we loaded into the car. Just when we thought that no one else could possibly fit, the men in white gloves pushed a bunch more people into the train car. We couldn't move and the four of us started laughing and couldn't stop because we had never experienced the like.

After, we got to the monorail without incident and took a nice ride along the Sumida River and Tokyo Bay. We stayed on until the end, continued to stay on the car, and went back the other way. The whole excursion - to the hotel and back - took two hours.

I came back and packed up for my flight. I head out to the airport at 12:55 p.m. Tokyo time. My flight takes off at 4:55 p.m. Tokyo time and I am scheduled to arrive in Chicago at 2:24 p.m. CDT. So, I leave Tokyo on Thursday, June 29 and arrive in Chicago on Thursday, June 29 - two and one half hours before I left Tokyo. It will truly be the longest day of my life.

So, for now I will sign off. This will most likely be the last post from Japan. In the coming days and weeks I plan to put in links to many of the pictures I took during this trip.

I hope this blog has been informative and fun to follow. Thank you for coming along on my virtual field trip.