4 November 2023
Double food court mall repeat
Aeon mall Hiroshima Fuchu
Before we get to the excitement of the mall, this afternoon I had to collect my train pass.
I bought a couple of different train passes before the price rise, and I needed to collect and activate one to start tomorrow. Since I was last here, you are now supposed to do this at machines, rather than the travel agent window. This is a good thing, the lines in the travel agent places can be huge and slow.
So I went to the station, with my passport which is required. I lined up for the green machines. No option on the green machine to exchange my QR code for a train pass. Grrrrr. I re read the instructions. Green machine, press exchange pass button, scan QR, scan passport, get ticket. But the option was not there, and there is no passport scanner. So I had to ask the guy guarding the line, who shows me that 2 of 12 otherwise identical machines have passport scanners, and that I should go and stand behind someone using one of those ones and make them anxious until they leave and let me use it. So I did, and it worked. So there you go, not all green machines are the same, at least in Hiroshima station.
Now for tonight's minor non adventure. I went to a mall. I went to a mall I have been to before years ago. It was still a mall. It has 2 food courts.
Behold, a mall. OMG a Zara, just like there is metres from my home in Melbourne.
But alas, I was comforted by the food court. My first food court experience of this trip. Taiwan had so many food courts to enjoy on my trip earlier this year.
I wanted pasta for dinner, I chose the more expensive place, in what would turn out to be the more expensive food court. Baller. So fancy that it comes with a salad bar. Or a sneeze bar as I fear they have become.
You might think my serve of pasta is tiny, but it came out on a joke plate. The salad bar plate along side it is a full size dinner plate. I mixed my salad in with the pasta to try and kill off sneeze residue from all those who used the salad bar before me.
OMG a second food court. And it is cheaper than the one I ate at. Mistakes have been made. I have many regrets. Actually I recall last time I was here I ate a cup of ice cream from this food court which is on the children's floor of the mall. A great day that was indeed.
On my way out I visited the actual Aeon. Their fruit was not peeled, sliced and plastic wrapped, so I was not interested.
Back right by my hotel, what I thought was an office building is actually a multi level electronics and book store. A kind of more upmarket Yodobashi. It was almost closing time, they were playing the go to sleep music, but I went in for a look.
Lots of interesting things, all very expensive, but then there was a guy bright red coughing, sneezing, choking, making growling sounds, and being held up by two brave employees while a third fanned him with a brochure, so I fled.
Which was a shame, because I wanted to buy a personal organiser, which are still a thing somehow, and I missed out on going to level 4, which is all fax machines.
Tomorrow I am going on a boat. The first of 2 boats on this trip.