9 November 2015
Not been here before
From Tokyo to Nagoya by Shinkansen
Now I am in Nagoya, a place I have not been before. The rest of this holiday will all be places I have not been before, which I think is a good thing, Tokyo seemed a bit too familiar.
Whilst packing to leave, I enjoyed a Japanese shopping show, where a group of women try on space age slimming pants on live tv. Their husbands are there to, they stand and judge their wives disapprovingly as they show their pre wet suit pants body, and visibly show their shame as the other men console them.
Then, the women change into the pants, and come out dancing. The men stand agog, and start high fiving each other, before some start crying. I bought 3 pairs.
Next, time to check out, which in a Japanese hotel involves handing them the key, and thats it. I sometimes stand there and expect to go through the whole procedure of arguing that I didnt use the minibar, parking, room service etc. like I get in Australia.
They just stare at me until I leave. When you check in you dont need to give them a card either, its just honor system. I could steal everything and wreck the room and they would have no way of charging me ever, so I did.
I left myself plenty of time to get to Tokyo station, and 6 minutes later I was there, 2 hours early. Luckily its a bit of a shopping mall with people spending a fortune on ornate boxes full of ritz crackers or similar.
Once on the train, it was time to play the game of kick someone out of your seat, and then watch that happen all over the train. This was repeated each time the train stopped and new people got on.
Unfortunately, it was very cloudy, so no view of Fuji, the same thing happened last time I took the bullet train this way.
Instead I could see a sea of concrete industrial areas.
This is my train. I took the 10 minute slower Hikari, instead of Nozomi, but as far as I could tell the equipment is the same '700 series', I had plenty of time to examine the trains.
At first I could not find a coffee shop selling anything other than dripulator coffee, so I had a coffee cream sandwich with sweetened bean paste instead.
Then I found coffee on another level.
Did someone really kill themselves by taking a 200,000 volt selfie?
Fuji is over there, past the smog and smoke.
It got slightly brighter at one point to see a mountain of sorts.
The view from Nagoya station, looks a lot like Japan.
Impressive building.
Now to prevent my mother asking, heres the hotel details. It is a Dormy Inn Premium, Near Sakae station.
It has an Onsen on site, and a free noodle service between 9:30pm and 11pm each night at the bar.
It is bigger than my last room in Tokyo, proper double bed.
The entrance way is a weird double door setup which seems like a lot of wasted space. Theres also a huge trough in the entrance, in case I need to drown someone.
The bathroom seems adequate. The shower door folds and opens inwards, a large person would never get out again.
I was super hungry by now, so it was time for a $2.50 convenience store sandwich (crusts removed of course), with a mochi and sweet bean dessert, absolutely delicious.