Posted by Ray Poynter, 28 June 2014
I am on my way to Tokyo to spend a month studying Japanese. I have an apartment booked for one month and I meet my tutor on Thursday. How will it go? Well, my optimism is high, but over the last 57 years I have not shown any aptitude for languages, so my optimism has to be tempered with some realism/concern.
Tonight I am stopping at the Yotel at Heathrow, as I am flying Sunday morning, and getting from Nottingham to Heathrow on a Sunday morning is quite a problem. The Yotel is probably quite a nice foretaste of Japan as it is a capsule hotel, something we often associate with Japan. My room is about 2 metres by three metres and has a bed, a desk, an area to get changed, a toilet, shower, and sink. The internet is free as are coffee and tea. The bed is interesting, the good news is that it is comfortable, but the interesting thing is that my bed is over the bed in next cabin (in the picture you can see I step up to my bed, so the bed in the next Cabin will effectively be underneath me. As well as meeting my needs really well, the Yotel is great value (by UK standards), tonight is costing me £71.
Tomorrow I am flying Singapore Airlines to Singapore, where I change planes and fly on another Singapore Airlines to Tokyo. The slightly off route is because I am spending a week in Singapore on my way back to the UK, for the Singapore MRS Conference, and this route is bar far the cheapest, and anyway I really enjoy Singapore Airlines.