After checking out, the owner asked Nick to move the car down the road to another space. As it was a one-way road, he would have preferred to go round the block, but she was gesturing to him to reverse. A couple of other vehicles came up behind as he was manoevering and my directions weren't much help either. Before we knew it the car was perilously close to a fence and he was stuck right across the narrow road with several cars waiting. Things quickly got worse as a guy in a van that was waiting got out and said he would try. He ended up getting the car door scratched and when he tried to go back the other way he also began to dent it. At this point Nick told me to go and wait for him in Starbucks, so I took Emily off down the road in much trepidation and close to tears. Nick was being very brave and managing to keep his cool under such awful circumstances, and I hoped he would be able to handle the situation without losing it.
He joined us quite quickly afterwards and I didn't dare mention it. He seemed fairly sanguine about it but it must have been very traumatic. Once fuelled for the morning we quickly got on our way. Just north of the city the highway runs directly along the coast, where the empty sands stretch for miles so we found a rest stop and got out for a wander on the beach. The sand was littered with washed up detritus; naturally the plastic flotsam and jetsam was of immense interest to Emily.
We played there a while before continuing on our drive back towards the airport. The satnav let us down a bit and we found ourselves buying a very poor lunch from a convenience store in a town that has the dubious honour of being UFO capital of Japan. Emily fell asleep after that and we carried on until we could draw up in a layby next to the sea near the airport and eat our unhealthy haul. The view from there was wonderful, with the snowy mountains of the Alps just visible across the water, but we had to eat quickly, knowing that Nick would be tied up a while explaining what had happened at the car rental place.
The return flight was near-empty, so we had a choice of seats and were able to shift over to see the vivid sunset as we approached Tokyo.
We were soon home and talking to the folks back home on Skype as they began their Christmas Day.
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