Japan, Day 7

Friday, November 17, 2006

Okay sorry for the delay on postings. The holiday is over so I'm going full-speed ahead now.

On technically our last day in Tokyo, we packed up our suitcases and headed over to Katsumi's to do laundry. It's weird--for a country that is so far ahead of us, technology wise, the washers and driers are really slow! I would have thought that they'd be pretty advanced considering that people in Tokyo are no longer allowed to hang their laundry outside, but I guess not.

At Katsumi's house, we watched a lot of Japanese TV, which is highly entertaining. They were focusing that day on the acquisition by the Red Sox of the Japanese baseball player, Matsuzaka, and also did a heartwarming documentary on a teacher turning around a "rough" neighborhood.

As we watched, Katsumi cooked up a huge breakfast for us: ham and eggs with mushrooms, rice, soup, nato (fermented soy beans--something like 90% of the population doesn't like these), cucumber rolls and fruit. It was a pretty amazing spread, but I found that I'm one of the 90%. Nato is GROSS.

Since Katsumi had to go to a work meeting, he called a cab for us to go to Tokyo Station. It was time for me to experience the bullet train (Shinkansen) for the first time ever.

This is a picture of a Nozomi train, the more expensive, faster one. We didn't ride one of these because they cost extra on top of the rail pass price. It doesn't stop at all of the stations, so it sometimes flies through, making a "BOOM!" and then flashes by in about 3 seconds (according to Wikipedia, it goes 300 mph).

These are some of the trains that we rode on (Hikari); they're still really really fast...

The trains are nice and smooth and have tons of leg room, and the ride was really smooth and relaxing after our week of pretty much non-stop sightseeing. I got some good reading in (Time Traveller's Wife--SO GOOD!), which was nice, and Dad slept. Fortunately, the train has instructions in English as well as in Japanese so it was pretty easy to figure out our stops.

The hotel that we stayed in while in Hiroshima was picked out by the Chans. It's called the ANA (not to be confused with the APA). Compared to the bare-bones of the hotel we stayed in at Hiroo, this place was absolutely luxurious. Everything was really clean and they even had CNN in English! Here's a picture of the room, courtesy of Uncle Lionel:

The Chans hadn't made it into Hiroshima yet, so Dad decided to finish his laundry down the street. I sat down and got some more quality reading time in--at the time I was reading The Time Traveller's Wife, and I couldn't stop. It was recommended to me by Catherine at work and Margaret. Originally, I thought it was going to be a cheesy love story that I'd hate, but they had recommended it, so I thought I'd try it. Unfortunately, it was a cheesy love story but it was so good. Fortunately Dad took forever at the laundromat so I was able to bawl for about 30 minutes as I finished the book. "Henry, no!!" Very good, but it's definitely a book to finish in private.

Finally Dad came back and the Chans knocked on our door. Tiffany and her friend were supposed to be coming in from Shanghai, but were having some transportation trouble. So, we decided to go out to get some noodles while we waited. The hotel recommended a place down the street, so we headed over there.

It was a pretty standard ramen place--they had that thick pork broth, same as the ramen place that we went to earlier, but it was a lot thicker and fattier. I ordered ramen with pork slices on top, and both Auntie Lorraine and I could not even finish the meat because it was so fatty. The gyoza that we ordered was pretty good, though, and so were the radishes. It was the first time that we had to really fend for ourselves going out to eat. I had never realized how hard it would be without Katsumi!

We were all really exhausted from travelling so all of us went to bed really early that night. Tiffany and her friend didn't even get in until after we had gone to sleep...