Japan Day 23 - Shibuya, Tokyo Our last four days in Tokyo were spent at a much slower pace, wandering around the city, exploring, and watching the fast-paced world turn around us. That is what Fletch and I have become good at over the years, planting ourselves in a spot and getting to know the neighborhood like locals. I notice the cultural nuances and he has the uncanny ability to never get lost. I pick up bits and pieces of the language, and he reads context and people’s intent, making language almost unnecessary. It makes for good wanderings. Now that we
Japan Day 17 (Part II) - Hiroshima This is a short one, but it didn't belong in the same post as the roller coasters. The two experiences were as different as night and durian. Halfway dazed from hours of fun and adrenalin, we rode the train back to Osaka, picked up our bags from the lockers, rode the local train to Shin-Osaka Station, and finally the bullet train to Hiroshima. What a day. Luckily our hotel was practically connected to the train station, and so we hardly had to walk outside. The Hotel Granvia Hiroshima was a hotel that had been the
Japan Day 15 - Kyoto to Osaka The strange “hotel” room we were staying in had given us a checkout time of 10:00 - 12:00. We took that as permission to have a lazy morning and took our time packing up. At 10:00 sharp someone was knocking on the door to make sure we were out of there. So much for that plan. Japanese people are very into water conservation. If water is going to be running to flush the toilet anyway, why not have it run through the sink first? We rode the bus back to the train station, walked across