God's Faithfulness in Tokyo

I've written in an earlier post how God made it possible for us to go for a holiday in Tokyo. This account is on His faithfulness prior and during the trip.

My younger girl came down with fever and cough just a few days before we were due to fly off. God healed her fever and miraculously none of us caught her germs, especially my older girl. Her cough was also better and by the middle of the trip, she stopped coughing.

Because we took the promotion deal by Cathay Pacific, the flight timing wasn't great. We had to stop over in Hong Kong so the whole journey took about 3 hours longer than if we were to fly direct. Charis doesn't take well to plane rides. She feels like vomiting once she enters the plane. Thank God she slept through most of the journey.

Our flight was to arrive at 9.25pm and the last bus to Shinjuku station was 10.40pm. We were concerned about delays in flight and immigration, and having to spend a bomb on taxi fare if we were to miss the bus. We spent quite a bit of time going through all kinds of alternatives - spending one night in Narita, booking a meet-and-greet i.e. a driver to send us to Shinjuku which cost about 10k yen more than taking the bus. We decided to trust God. Our plane landed early and we even caught the earlier bus at 10pm :)

Another concern was the choice of hotel. We decided on Shinjuku because we were to meet up with my husband's family on the 4th day of our holiday and take the train to Hakone. The train station was at Shinjuku so it's easier to stay around there. After consulting friends and reading reviews on Trip Advisor, we booked Keio Plaza. It seemed like a good choice because it's near the train station, the airport bus goes there and the hotel has free shuttle bus to and fro Disneyland. The only drawback was that it's pricey, about $800 plus for 3 nights. Even though we've booked, we researched more. We found Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku, a 3 year old hotel, with very good reviews on cleanliness and location. Cleanliness is very important as Daren and the girls are allergy prone. When I researched more about Keio and found that it was built in 1979, we decided to switch. We cancelled our booking with Zuji and booked with Hotels.com who was having a joint promotion with Visa. We were supposed to incur a $50 cancellation fee but Daren managed to get Zuji to waive it off due to misrepresetation on their part. Nowhere in their booking process did they mention that there's a cancellation fee. In fact, they kept stressing that there's no cancellation charges. We found out later that the $50 is an administration fee and it's stated only in their FAQ. The day after we confirmed our Sunroute booking, Hotels.com sent Daren an e-coupon that gives further discount on the hotel rate. We quickly called to see if we could use it immediately. We could so we ended up paying $649 for 3 nights.

God is good. Sunroute was excellent. We took a twin room that came with 2 double beds. We joined them together and could sleep four of us. They didn't charge us extra for the kids. The hotel was within short walking distance from the train station, had good amenities like 24 hr convenience stores, ramen shops, bakeries, free internet access at the guest lounge, and a latest addition - coin operated laundry at the basement car park. I was researching for laundry around the hotel but there wasn't any nearby. The latest reviews on the hotel didn't mention about the laundry facility. So it was a pleasant surprise. It was needed as the weather was rather cold and I didn't bring enough thick clothing for the girls, so what they wore needed to be washed and dried before they could wear again.

God is amazing. I was monitoring the weather. The week before we were due to go, it was raining with thunderstorm! The forecast showed sunny days for the week that we would be there and it was. We had clear skies everyday and even got a tan! The day that we left, it rained. It's really amazing how the dark clouds just disappeared for that week and then came back just when we were to leave.

God provides. Our trip was made up of 3 parts - Tokyo, Hakone, Tokyo. During our last leg of the trip, my sis-in-law booked us in Hotel Nikko in Odaiba. It was a beautiful hotel. However, the one thing that we needed which they didn't have was free internet access to do our online check-in. Our flight was 9.45am. The earliest airport limousine bus that would pick us from the hotel was 7.05am. It takes about 75 mins to travel to the airport. With morning traffic, possible immigration queue, we really needed to check-in in advance to buy more time. More time for what? More time to buy snacks and chocolates from the airport. There's nothing much to buy in Japan. What's good is really the food and we were told the airport has a wide variety and it's cheaper. Well, God provided in several ways. Our dear friend, Kang, did the check-in for us back in S'pore, which was really a life-saver. When we arrived at the airport, the queue for the normal check-in was super long. Ours was much shorter and those in front were all lone travellers so they cleared very fast. There was barely any morning traffic and no queue at the immigration. All these gave us about 45 mins, enough time to take a shuttle train to the biggest Royce store where we bought almost $150 worth of chocolates, buy snacks for the girls who had not eaten breakfast and other food stuff.

We may not have experienced God through natural wonders of creation in this trip (unlike my friend who went to Nikoi Island and marveled at God's creation of the sea, or another who went on an Alaska cruise and saw glaciers, whales and bears) but He guided our planning and provided all that were beyond our control. For this, I give thanks and declare He is a faithful God.