lost or what?

Snot pump

Shinkansen from Tokyo to Shizuoka

Now I am in Shizuoka, and today we have reached peak mucus.

The day started off normally enough, although there are persistent light showers, and yes talking about the weather is boring, but it gets exciting at 3 minutes to 9.
You see in Japan, being late for work has consequences, I dont know what they are, but there is a mad panic as 9am approaches and people run in front of moving buses in the rain so they dont have to be caned or perhaps be the bosses foot stool for the day for being a few seconds late.
The rain adds an increased level of difficulty to running across the road, because you must cover your head, so the black hair dye doesnt run and ruin your outfit and reveal your terrible shameful secret.

I wandered around taking it all in and having a couple of coffees until it was time to go to the Shinkansen. I had purchased my discount ticket as recommended by the internet, to save money, which has special conditions in Japanese only writing.
Once I arrived at Tokyo station, I went to the manned gate, showed my ticket, no, not this booth, go to northern gate. So out into the rain and around the station I go.
Guy at northern booth also says no, go to eastern booth, he draws me a map, so I go to eastern booth. Eastern booth guy says map wrong, go back to northern booth, tell him northern booth is right booth.
So back into the rain again, and back to the northern booth. The same guy was still at the gate and checked his watch and decided to let me in. At which point I asked him if he enjoyed sending me off into the rain to amuse himself. He understood perfectly what I meant and yelled something at me, so I yelled back at him GO ZEY EEE MUSSSS!!!! and held my glare.

Anyway, I still made my train with time to spare, thats when the fun started, it was quite full with snotty Japanese folks coughing, sneezing and draining their mucus glands generally into tissues. Nothing new there, my new theory is that the entire population has spent so long leaning forwards staring at phones that the equilibrium that controls their snot valves in their noses has been destroyed.
Thats when a guy 2 rows behind me started snorting and choking at once, on his own snot. So he gets up and gets a thing out of his bag that is a face mask with a hose attached to it and a couple of bottles. I am not kidding. It looked like a breast pump women use to milk themselves like cows!
He then attached this thing to his face and pumped what I presume was saline or similar up his nose and it flushed all the snot out, all whilst on the train! I couldnt make this up if I tried.

I arrived in Shizuoka covered in a thick layer of Japanese lung contents and headed for my hotel, but google had other ideas.
The map kept deciding I didnt really want to go to my hotel, and moving the pin to one of three other hotels, this became amusingly infuriating as I walked around in circles in the rain.
Eventually I found what I thought was the place, the lift area had no sign though, but mentioned the 2nd floor had 'meeting garden area'. I went up the lift and sure enough, its a hotel lobby.
Then the woman there tried and tried to explain to me that the main entrance is closed from 12 noon, I think she meant midnight, and that I must use the other door, which I have no idea where it is.
The best part was now the manager came out, and said to me, firmly with hand out stretched as to say STOP, 'NO PARTY, you must not have party, if have party you will NO RETURN'.
Again I had to use my overpowering glare of death to let this hotel clerk know that his life involves comparing names on passports to names on bookings and taking credit card payments for a living.
So, now I need to go find some people for a party.

Boring photos today, but the stories were decent?