15 November 2024
Altered Hokuriku lap completed
Fukui to Tokyo on the shinkansen
Long train ride day, bare minimum photo effort day.
I started my day in Fukui, at the dinosaur themed station, where I wrote a personal goodbye note to the 136 dinosaurs located in and around the station.
I then boarded a bullet train, half full, and back tracked to Kanazawa where I had already been, stayed onboard and went all the way to Tokyo. This takes about 3.5 hours.
This path is generally called the Hokuriku arch, which ordinarily includes Kyoto. On my trip I included Nagoya instead, and bypassed Kyoto/Osaka.
Anyway, now I am back in Tokyo, for 7 more nights, in a hotel I have stayed in before in Kanda, where I am eating a mandarin sandwich, and acting surprised that it is raining lightly out the window.
I was up on the Fukui platform too early so as usual, wandered down to the end to take a photo, which resulted in a security guard following me with great concern.
Bullet trains on either side.
I will skip forward now to the oh so exciting hotel room shots in Tokyo, this is the Sotetsu Fresa Inn Kanda. This is actually a single room, with large double bed (around the corner). It is as big as what some places market as a double room though. The desk situation here is excellent.
The bathroom is fine, I prefer the shower with the closing solid door rather than a shower curtain so I can take control of the nozzle which has more pressure than a fire hose and clean the back of my knees and in between my toes without fear of spraying water onto my bed / laptop. You really do have to be careful with this, more than once I have turned a Japanese shower on and the pressure has been enough to lift the shower head attached to a hose clean out of the holder, where it then violently dances about like if you were teasing an angry brown snake with a stick.
And here is my lunch/afternoon tea. A mandarin and whipped cream sandwich. I prefer the kiwi and strawberry one, but they did not have it.
Now to check for rain, I have big hiking plans for tomorrow.