- heart felt robots
- take on the toughies
- codelove
- whalechan
- yugamae
- thisischris
- how-to language
- jeff the fish
- beluga calf
- three ninjas
- rod danz
(EDIT: Sorry about the 'not able to comment' thing - fixed!)I did not sleep well last night, as in, I've been awake since 3am. Tonight I will sleep well, though. I spent a good amount of time trying to make sense of the Shinkansen timetables, and I must say, learning the advanced rules for Battletech was easier. We decided to just do the right gaijin thing and ask someone at the tourist info booth. So our breakfast that morning was, literally, iced coffee and half a tamago-yaki each. We checked out of our hotel, hurried to the Yamanote line, got lost in the Tokyo station more then once, and finally ended up in the right place to exchange our Rail Pass vouchers for real passes. We booked reserved seats on the next Shinkansen to Hachinohe and had about 7 minutes to run to the platform, find the right train, and board. The Shinkansen is fast, but Sandy and I had to sit apart from each other, flanked by strangers and hungry. I tried to sleep but couldn't. Three hours later...
Ahem... Three hours later found us lost in the Hachinohe station, eventually finding our way to an empty platform, and boarding what looked like the correct train. There were maybe 20 other people on board, and about three in our train car. Empty. This was a tiny local access train, so there was less and less English to be seen, all the announcements were in Japanese, and stops were mostly little hick towns and dirt roads - not on any of our maps. In my opinion, this was perfect.
We saw awesome little farm towns, dreary villages, lots of water and mountains, and all the locals stared at us when they thought we weren't looking(and lent a hand if we made understandable mistakes).
(Note:the JR info desk people are very helpful and patient.) We finally rolled into Aomori city, in the Aomori prefecture, after two more hours on the local express. It would have been warm, but it was very windy, which was good. Aomori is tiny, quaint and adorable. It is very "small town", and we saw lots of old people and kids. Every other person is on a bike, which looks like suicide to me, judging from the way folks drive over here. After checking into our nice hotel room (of which I give a tour), we were on a hunt for curry. We had only eaten the tamago-yaki and iced coffee that morning, and we were famished; a kind of hunger only Japanese curry can quench.
We did a bit of shopping afterwards, just a tiny bit, and wandered around, mentally planning our activities for tomorrow. I bought a crazy awesome delicious dessert, and Sandy got some stuff too. All-in-all, the day was a major success.
Labels: Aomori, Japan08, Shinkansen
posted by tangentbot @ 2:41 AM
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We are in the middle of planning our return trip to Japan, which will take place in the last 3 weeks of May. So far, our itinerary is thus:
It seems crazy and busy and very transity, but I love trains. This trip will let us see more of Japan then our last trip, and we intend to pack very light this time. We'll probably do all of our shopping in Tokyo our last week there, although I still intend to buy knives in Kyoto and at least 2 katsuobushi and a kezuriki in Tokyo (perhaps one of those artisan hand-crafted aluminum pots as well - I wish I could get a few donabe, but I'm afraid of them breaking).
So, that's it so far. I'm going to put a "Japan" section on my site or something - I already have plans on moving my last Japan blog, japanbot, to this website, so I might just do a "Travel in Japan" portion or something. Anything could happen, who knows‽
Labels: Japan, Shinkansen, travel, vacation
posted by tangentbot @ 11:20 AM
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