Saturday, April 22, 2017
Checkout hr591
I got up early in the morning on the last day of my latest trip. The
reason was simple; I was going to the hotel’s exclusive fitness club one
last time before the checkout invalidated my free ticket. I passed
through the heavy double doors of the club again and the clerk ushered
me as a personal guide as it happened last night. Since the spa and the
locker room don’t open until noon, there is a special locker room for a
member who uses the pool in the morning. It was much smaller, but robes,
towels and amenities were fully provided. The morning light liberally
came in through the glass-dome ceiling and filled up the poolside. I had
the large pool facility all to myself again, the whole morning through.
It seemed as if the gorgeous pool was reserved just for me. I doubted
if Bill Gates even had this scale of luxury. I saw my room through the
glass ceiling and spotted my partner who was standing by the window.
While I was taking a Jacuzzi on the poolside, I waved at him. He waved
back and looked a little sad because he couldn’t enjoy this free treat
due to his atopic eczema. On one hand I felt sorry for him; on the other
hand, I enjoyed to the maximum such a luxurious, refreshing, and dreamy
time that I had never had before. After I took a shower in the elegant
shower booth, I left the club. It was about noon and I passed the
members who were coming in. It is said that the gap between the rich and
the poor is generally small in Japan. I had thought there weren’t so
many mega-rich people in Japan as in the States until I came here. But
now I realized quite a few mega-rich Japanese people existed, as I
actually saw the members who apparently paid the five-digit membership
fee. I hadn’t known that because they lived in a different world from me
like in this club. I wondered if I could ever visit this club again and
wished strongly for that. I came back to my room, packed in a great
hurry and checked out. I didn’t forget to have expensive coffee and tea
for free one more time at the hotel’s privileged lounge before I left.
The receptionist was the same person and got familiar since I came here
three days in a row. She knew I used the lounge for free and I felt
embarrassed. When I left the hotel, I missed it more than ever now that I
experienced the fitness club. I got to another shopping mall by train,
bought a skirt 80 percent off and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant
that we rarely find in Japan. As the mall is adjacent to Tokyo Disney
Resort, I saw the fireworks of the park from the mall for free. I took a
train again to Tokyo Station and looked around the shopping area while I
was waiting for the bullet train on which I had booked the seat. Just
when I was looking, half-off stickers began to be put on packages of
sushi. I got one of those and had it on the bullet train with the
leftover wine from the hotel that I had brought in a plastic bottle.
Although I was exhausted from lack of sleep and swimming, I really
wanted to do this trip over from the beginning. I pondered when it would
be that I could take a trip like this one. While I recalled the
heavenly sensation I had when I was swimming alone in the pool inside
that fitness club, the bullet train ran through several long tunnels and
sent me back in my town that was packed in deep snow. I took a cab to
my apartment. It was a blizzard. I could see nothing but hammering snow
out the windshield of the cab. With that near zero visibility, the cab
was running into darkness at breakneck speed toward my accustomed world…