The Quinn Family Excellent Adventure: Googbye Kawaguchi & Mount Fuji - Tokyo 2 Japan - Owl Cafe

The next morning we were surprised to see snow. Lot's of snow. Wow, we got very lucky. The beautiful clear views of Mount Fuji were gone. We checked out and got a little damp walking back to the bus station. The nearby Lawsons floor was soaked from wet foot traffic. The bus station was inundated with wet people both coming and going. Many appeared unprepared for the radical weather changes this mountainous area can offer. We were soon on our bus and onward back to Tokyo. Whew I thought. Warm and relaxed on the bus.

This is where the fun began. KT had previously arranged an Owl cafe visit for tonight's early evening. We were easily on track for that. After, she planned to grab all the necessary things to ship a bunch of stuff back to Canada. That's alot of work. I'm relaxing on the bus watching the weather turn from snow to rain. At 12:47 PM I get an email from BagBnB indicating my drop off location is now unavailable. They offered an alternative and requested confirmation. WTF ... The stuff was planned to be dropped of at 10 AM tomorrow. I was really lucky to have worked in a extra day in my BagBnB plans just in case this happened. I still needed to think about timing and location as we would be returning from Matsuyama to Tokyo and then from Tokyo to Narita on already reserved seats. After looking into it, the alternative BagBnB location looked good and I confirmed with an email. I also started researching an alternative bag storage locations. It felt like this would go sideways. They did not confirm anything with me. I sent like 4 unanswered emails to the day I found an official bag storage service was available in the Tokyo station. It was called the Rail-Go Service located here https://goo.gl/maps/4dB4dCcxvtYrtjUc8 Sweet. I wish I had found it earlier. It looked hard to physically find as others in the Google reviews had indicated this. I was kinda nervous about trying to find a place with heavy bags on the next day. Michelle was hip on helping me find the place. Whew. Our bus arrived back in Tokyo, we hit the washroom and went directly to the Owl Cafe, Michelle did not look so good on the train towards the Owl Cafe. She thinks she left her phone on the bus. We inspect her bags and pockets, no phone. A little Googling revealed some numbers to call. Let's see what happens. We visited the Owl cafe which was cool. My mind was on other things unfortunately. After the cafe we had plenty left to do. Michelle and I went back to the Bus Station hoping her phone was found, KT returned home to start the shipping process. The bus station personal were great. They are responsible for items lost at the station. The buses are third party companies and each have support number. We were armed with all the detail necessary to get the company and English support number. We pounded several hundred yen into a local telephone trying to explain the situation but it was difficult. They wanted to call back, to a cell phone which we did not have and in Japanese. I kinda gave up on it and was already shopping for it's replacement. We hoped that perhaps in Matsuyama we could find a helpful person to assist. It was time to return to the Tokyo station to find the Rail-Go Service.

What a gong show. It literally took us 1 hour. The Google review I found were really helpful but it only offered a few clues. The local signage is terrible for this place. It took a lot of sleuthing to find a poorly marked entrance and 2 elevators. There is a benefit to all this difficulty. There is plenty of storage at this place as it's insanely hard to find. I would soon fix the location directions with a Google review myself. The staff at the JR Bag place were great and provided us with an estimate. Awesome now I can finally relax about our bags. The BagBnB staff had still not replied. I chose to not say anything so as to suggest I was cancelling. Their policy is no refunds with cancellations. I wanted a refund but wanted them to play that card. A few days later a new support email was replied to indicating a full investigation and refund was coming. Cool. The "CEO" sent a survey request a few days later with the same generic support email. I tried my best to give them my .02 Yen and still no official reply. Not impressed. At least I got the refund. Not done with them tho.

We finally got home to find a slightly stressed out KT. She got a run around with the paperwork and forms required for all she needed to send back. There was quite a bit of back and forth for her and she lost some time. I suggested she waits but she and Michelle pulled out all the stops and worked on the packing and documenting process for hours. The postal service location was not too far and open 24 hours. I walked with them as a parcel carrying Sherpa hoping the process was done. OMG more to do. Itemized writing to make a manifest. I was done and headed home. The girls were at least an hour later. After one hell of a day we needed some rest. It was to be an early departure for Mastuyama. We packed for a multi day stay in Matsuyama and compressed whatever we did not need into our large napsaks as they would stay in Tokyo for a while. Everything else had to go to Matsuyama as we were leaving Tokyo 2 in the morning.

Bam, next morning snow