unexpected deviations
i am very behind on blog posts, for reasons that will become apparent in this post and the one for april 5. i am working through it right now, trying to get caught up. but its vacation, so i wont break my back to get it done.
today we deviated from the original plan in a few ways. we took a bullet train to a town west of tokyo called hamamatsu, and had an absolute nightmare scenario unfold in our last hours in tokyo.
the original plan
so, here is how today was supposed to go down. alex and mike were going to get up early and go see tokyo skytree. they bought tickets the other day after we failed to get in. i thought i was going to be absolutely dead, since is this day right after the nagano trip. my past 2 trips to japan have left me functionally dead on the day after the nagano trip, so i was going to hang back in the airbnb, edit some photos, then pack my bags and deal with the airbnb checkout procedures. japan has very strict and complicated rules for trash disposal, and one of us had to go through the trash piece by piece and sort it into 5 different bags to dispose of it.
so alex and mike woke up and headed out around 8:30 or 9:00 am.
catastrophe strikes
alex and mike took a taxi to the nearest train station to save time, as it is around a 20-25 minute walk to get there.
when exiting the cab, mike accidentally left his phone inside. they did not notice until after they had gone through the train station and taken a train to their destination.
this caused them to cancel their plans for the day trying to track this phone down. it took forever to coordinate. calling the phone repeatedly did not help either.
meanwhile, completely unaware this had happened, i went about my morning in the airbnb and started packing and sorting through the trash at an extremely leisurely pace. alex and mike had to submit a ticket to the taxi company. it was difficult to get the details here, as the taxi was booked on mike’s (lost) phone. the details on which taxi they took, and the receipt, which could have been used to track down the taxi much easier, were on the phone in the taxi.
they eventually decided to call another taxi and try to explain this to the taxi driver for assistance. the driver called the taxi company and explained it, eventually providing them with a support phone number and asking them to call it. they exited the cab and attempted to call the taxi support.
it turns out that whatever sim card alex is using does not allow him to call japanese phone numbers. at this point, i was in the loop and we met up at the station we were intending to leave tokyo from. at this point, the train we were meant to get on was leaving in about an hour.
my phone was able to call the taxi support phone number, and i tried calling to get help with this. the person who picked up basically did not speak any english at all. google translate and some very basic japanese knowledge on my part allowed me to communicate the issue to the guy, who explained that he would track down the taxi and let me know what to do. he asked me to call back in 20 minutes.
we were getting very close to the deadline and didn’t want to miss our train. especially because our friend from kyoto was meeting us there.
so we told our japanese friend what happened and gave him all the info we had. he called the taxi support number and was able to communicate this issue much easier than we were.
while we were waiting on the results of that call, i pulled this out of my wallet:
this is an omikuji, a fortune you can get at shrines and temples in japan. you put 100 yen in a donation box, then shake a big container with a hole in it until a stick comes out of it. the stick has a number written on it, and you open the corresponding numbered drawer to pull a random fortune. i got this one the other day in asakusa. “best fortune”. notice one of the lines on it is “the lost article will be found”.
literally within 5 seconds of me pulling this out of my wallet,
after some back and forth, it turned out the driver actually changed his mind and didn’t want to come deliver it. it took a lot of convincing, but our friend convinced him to mail it to his house. so mike would have his phone back in 2 days.
this whole saga felt like divine intervention.
i think if this had happened to me, i may have just had to cancel the rest of the trip and come home. but through the incredible blessing of “having a japanese friend”, we were able to resolve it and get mike his phone back.
onward to hamamatsu
we barely caught our train on time. when we thought the driver was going to deliver the phone, we were going to leave mike in tokyo with alex’s phone to coordinate the pickup and have him catch up with us later. we received the news that he was going to mail it just in time for us all to catch our train out of town.
hamamatsu is an interesting town. it isn’t small or anything, but it also isn’t a town we ever would have thought to visit without the suggestion from our japanese friend. the town is apparently famous for two things, gyoza and unagi (grilled eel).
so of course, a big component of us coming to the town was to eat gyoza and unagi. but we didn’t know anything about this town at all. and that was kind of on purpose. we booked the airbnb and intentionally did absolutely no research whatsoever.
the airbnb was incredibly nice. it is a very large (for japan) 3 bedroom house owned by a manga collector. there was a little miniature manga library in the house, and there was a note on the listing that if there was any specific manga we wanted, he would make sure it was in the house for us.
unfortunately, we can’t read japanese. so this particular benefit was lost on us.
unagi
after dropping our bags at the airbnb, we headed out to get some unagi. i’ve only had unagi a couple times, and it has varied pretty wildly in quality. this place was incredible though.
it also came with something i forgot to take a picture of, eel liver soup. it was fantastic.
hamamatsu castle
after that delicious meal, we headed out walking around town. the most notable nearby landmark was hamamatsu castle, so we started walking in that direction to go check it out.
unfortunately, i don’t know much about this castle, or japanese castles in general. it is quite cool looking though.
more of hamamatsu
after checking out hamamatsu castle, we headed out to look at the rest of the city. we went to a couple restaurants, drank some lemon sours, ate some gyoza and yakiniku, and explored the city.
people were out celebrating the cherry blossoms in the nearby park, setting up giant picnics with their whole families. it was really cool to see. i’d seen this a couple times before, but never at night or this lively.
i am extremely behind on my blog at the moment, it has been a whirlwind couple of days here. the pace at which we are moving cities and doing things in these cities is like three times what it would be if i was here alone, so finding time to update the website has proven difficult. plus, i have gotten sick, which i will get into more on the april 5 blog.
