Lou now so ill she can hardly speak. May be a relief for Ieuan! Up early to do final packing and leave for GP to beat the traffic. Get outside to find it raining and miserable – typical after 2 days of sun! The car park man said “motegi ok” so we hoped the rain might have stopped there. On arrival, we are sent off to park miles away from the usual place, and bizarrely, seem to be left to our own devices with no instructions from the orange baton waving crew (today they have shower caps over their police hats to protect them from the rain!). We park in car park 9, not far from the far section of the track, and don our waterproofs and head to the track bus stop. The bus is excruciatingly slow – stopping for every man, dog, and feather that blows across its path, and is boiling hot with waterproofs on – plus we are standing up with about 50 other people also crammed in the aisle like sardines, standing.
Had a coffee, then went to our (wet) seats to settle in and watch the 1st race. Took some pics of the original “headwear” being worn by the Japanese girls in front of us to protect them from the rain (see pic), plus a pic of the local fashion in socks with open shoes! Watched the racing which seemed to go very quickly. Capirossi won the GP – we saw a few crashes and Rossi went off track at our corner. Stoner beat Rossi to become world champion 2007. The Japanese exhibited polite wild clapping whenever a Japanese rider so much as approached another bike, let alone overtook it. Didn’t get too wet as rain wasn’t heavy, so walked back to the car, and joined the queue to get out.
It was slow going to the expressway due to the 1 lane road, 50 kmph speed limit and the volume of traffic. Plus there were the usual huge number of traffic lights along the way. Hampered by poor signpostage, we made it to the expressway in a couple of hours only to find that was chocca too. Got stuck in a huge queue heading into Tokyo taking about 2 hours to travel just a couple of km’s. The journey was livened up by the GPS suggesting that we might like to visit some local peanuts (pics of peanuts on the display) and we passed a building with a ginormous yellow 3D nose attached to it. Once the traffic cleared, Ieuan navigated us expertly back to base, as we managed to spot the street we needed by a stroke of luck and got there far easier than expected. Shattered, we parked the car and headed for bed. Ieuan insisted on having a pot noodle prepared for him before bed, since we’d had no tea.
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