I went to bed Christmas night a bit after midnight and set my alarm for 6:59 am in order to catch the 8:02 Nartia Express train to Narita airport (which is over an hour from Shinjuku) for my winter vacation to Columbo Sir Lanka. The next morning I woke at 8:37 and the alarm hadn't gone off (I set it last night to see if it would go off and it did). I quickly got dressed (my bags were already packed) and tried to see if I could still make the flight which was scheduled for 11:20. I made it to Shinjuku station and tried to get the bus-which I was in time for at 9:00, but it was sold out. The operator suggested the Skyliner Express about 20 minutes away in Nipporri. This is where I made a mistake instead of waiting for the next train I should have taken a taxi and I might have made it in time-as it was I arrive 40 minutes before my flight, but Sri Lankan Airlines service closes an hour before a flight.
Now I had officially missed my flight I called my travel agent who gave me two options-fly through Abu dhabi on Qatar Airlines for an additional ¥93,000. The other option was wait until December 29th-four days after my initial flight. The third option was to cancel for 2/3 of the ticket rebate. There was no way I was going to pay more to fly way out of the way on the day of. Four days seemed unreasonable to wait and almost cut my time in Sri Lanka in half. Keeping in mind that I will be spending a week in LA and three weeks in SE Asia in February-I decided to cancel the ticket. It was a quick emotional decision and maybe not the right one, but 9 plus hours both ways for five days was not appealing.
Update:I checked on the Thursday flight, ¥153,200-no thanks.
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