Our flight from Ishigaki was not direct to Haneda. Indeed, the lady at the JAL front desk told us (or showed us on a paper translated in english, should I say !) that the runway was not long enough to take off with full tank, so the plane had to make a stop at Miyako, which is an island close to Ishigaki (20min flight). Hence we stopped there and we had to disembark while the tank was getting filled up. Passengers from Miyago also got on the plane, and we could then make a safe flight to Haneda airport.


For the record, as on the flight form Tokyo to Ishigaki 5 days earlier, no food is served on JTA, in spite of the 3 hours spent in that plane ! So you'd better have eaten before getting on the plane !



An other interesting and funny fact: as Ishigaki is a small airport, a bus takes you to the plane and you get on it directly from the tarmac. Just before taking off, it was funny to see three guys from the airport (the guy who filled the tank, the guy who helped us getting on from the bus and an other guy) carefully aligned and waving to us to say goodbye ! But I can not show you any movie or picture of this event because as soon as you get on a japanese plane, you have to turn off any electronic devices, camera included... :-(


We finally arrived at Haneda with a beautiful weather. We could enjoy a nice view over Tokyo before landing, it was amazing !
We then took a direct bus from Haneda to Tsukuba (1800 yens). Those buses are well indicated in the airport, and the one heading to Tsukuba was on platform 13.
We could finally experience the tokyoite traffic-jams. We had heard of it for such a long time, and we could never see any. This time, it took at least 45 minutes to get out of Tokyo. But it was not even boring since we could "visit" the city and enjoy the scenery of the sunset over the buildings ! The funniest part is that despite the traffic jams, we arrived in Tsukuba 2 minutes earlier than scheduled ! This is Japan !



We then had dinner at home with N&A and french friends (S&A). N&A cooked a typical korean bbq, that japanese people like a lot, called Yakiniku - literally fried (yaki) meat (niku). You install a hot plate on the table and then you fry vegetables, mushrooms, corn..etc, and of course meat (pork, lamb, beef) which was previously seasonned with red hot pepper sauce. You eat this fried food with Kimchi (spiced vegetables, especially cabbage) and Kim (salted seaweeds). De-li-cious !


Then we went with N. to a sayonara bbq of a french postdoc leaving tsukuba. This was taking place in a small park in Tsukuba. When we arrived there, it was almost the end of it and most of the people there were pretty drunk !

We then headed to Party-Party Karaoke, in order to finally enjoy this "traditional" japanese hobby ! A few people from the sayonara bbq came with us, and 10 people finally arrived at the Karaoke. It was 1100 yens for 3h (you pay drinks separatly) - 10 people in a (small) room, you choose your songs on an electronic remote control, and then everybody sings together very loud and dances ! This was very funny but so different from the japanese "traditional" style where everybody sits, and sings one after the other !

We came back home with our bicycles at almost 4 am, for a good night sleep !