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China, September 2005 Day 11 Our last morning in Shanghai and not a moment too soon. We leave our apartment at 6 a.m. and take a taxi to the bus station and the bus to the airport. We arrive too early for the restaurants to be open but find a noodle stand and have a noodle breakfast. Poobie was sad that we didn't take the magnetic levitation train the the airport. Instead of 45 minutes on the bus, the train would have covered the 30 km in 8 minutes reaching a maximum speed of 430 km/hr! We wander around the airport for a little while, admiring the odd architecture and shopping a little, but not buying anything. We say goodbye to my parents who are on their way back to Shenzhen and we get on our ANA flight to Narita, flight time 1 hr and 48 min. In Narita, I am pleasantly surprised to see a new airport. We take a shuttle from Terminal 2 to T1 and after confirming that we are not allowed to take an earlier flight, hunker down in the sushi bar to partake of some "genuine Japanese sushi." It's good, but not any different than we are used to, at least the nigiri sushi. We did not see any Godzilla Rolls or Caterpillar Rolls on the menu for which I am eternally grateful. It was a little odd that they accepted Japanese Yen or American dollars equally, but we were happy as we only had US $. After puttering around a little more, we decided to have another snack in the form of a Haagen Daz "Crispy Sandwich" in Green Tea flavor. This particular ice cream novelty/confection would prove to be the most delicious pre-packaged ice cream we have ever had. The green-tea ice cream itself was very good, but the embellishments on it were an epiphany! The ice cream bar was enveloped in a brown sugar flavored shell (I think it was cocoa-butter) and then sandwiched between two crisp wafers, very much reminiscent of oblaten. Gaahh! It's torture just thinking about it. I'm sure it will be a culinary obsession of mine to recreate it in the U.S. as only Haagen Daz Japan makes it! We finally board our United Airlines flight to SFO and nine hours and 5 minutes later, we are finally in home territory. We would have arrived a bit earlier, but the pilot missed the first landing. Or so says Poob. Truthfully, I was asleep. Back to our apartment by 1:15 p.m.
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