I made it to Utsunomiya, safe and sound :D Woke up on the 30th at 7am, as that's when the shower/bathroom opened, had a quick shower (was in awe of the fact that the entrance to the room was covered by a big curtain saying ゆ on it) and then went for breakfast with some of my roommates, ie a Japanese girl from Yokohama and a Chinese lady from Taipei. We ate breakfast together, talking in a weird mixture of Japanese, Chinese and English, talking about how Taiwanese people eat vegetables and how the Japanese girl fancied Gordon Brown o_0, while eating the interesting Japanese style breakfast which consisted of fish, rice, tofu, egg roll, seaweed and miso soup with bits of tofu floating in it... and I swear it had exactly the same acidy nasty taste that vomit has. Eugh.
Went back to the room, packed up my stuff, checked out of the hostel (and was given a cute little memento keyring, aww) and walked back towards the train station, pulling along with me my giant suitcase. Found the Nagoya Shinkansen, and went to Nagoya. Chika greeted me at the platform, although she told me to meet her by the West Exit from the platform, and there wasn't one xD Went down the escalator, met up with James and Hugo, Marie and Mari also joined us, and we tried to find a coin locker to put my massive suitcase in, but since there were no lockers left, Chika found out we could leave it in the cloakroom of a department store for free. We then went to a ramen-ya for lunch. I had a really good ebi tempura ramen dish :D
We then all went on the bus (on which we discussed Marie's devil smile) through Nagoya to the Tokugawa museum and the Tokugawaen, and looked at the exhibits of Edo period armour and saw copies of the Genji Monogatari. We were amazed by the swords, but even more amazed when me and Marie watched some of the others get scolded by a information lady for walking across a map too much, as it seemed like they were children again xD Hugo was desperate to get back to studying, and since the rest of us had all had enough of Genji Monogatari, we went to the gift shop, where we taught Chika how to pronounce 'hubba hubba'. We then went outside, into and around the gardens, which were truly beautiful, but we weren't out there long before the heat (must've been above the 100 mark) and humidity got to us, so we sat on some benches in the shade and ate milk sweets.
Before long, it was time for me to leave Nagoya, leave the others, and get on the Shinkansen again and go to Utsunomiya. I swear I have now mastered the Japanese train system, as at the time of writing I have been on 3 Shinkansen, a local train and a limited express train, and even understand all the overhead announcements! We said a sad goodbye on the platform, the others surprising me with a little gift which was so sweet, and hopefully I'll see them again if I can come back to Japan in my holiday. I then got on a Hikari train going to Tokyo, lugged my suitcase onto it, and departed. I kept dozing off on the train, which really was not a good idea as upon arriving in Tokyo, I had 10 minutes to find my train to Utsunomiya, and obviously I needed all the time as the signs for the destinations were all in Japanese. I had to actually ask a security guard where the Tohoku line departed from, and with 2 mins to spare, got on the train and did the last leg of my journey.
On the train, a torrential downpour started, cooling me down considerably. I arrived at about 9.15pm, called Mayumi on a payphone, who was obviously expecting my call, and told me she'd meet me by the Shinkansen gate in 20 minutes. I sat down, just to the side of it, and tried to keep an eye out for her coming in through one of the 4 different exits. It reached 20 minutes, and I hadn't seen her so was getting slightly worried, when I heard an announcer ask for 'Georgina Kura-ku sama' to come to the Shinkansen gate. Since I was sitting just next to it, I got up, started to walk towards it, then saw Mayumi running towards me xD She seemed much smaller in height than I remembered, but obviously I was only 11 last time I saw her. We walked out through the rain to her car, loaded my suitcase into it with some difficulty, and then stopped off at a supermarket to get me something small to eat.
We arrived at hers at about 10.15pm, I met her husband, was shown where everything was in the house (and it is so Japanese xD), and it feels a lot like a homestay experience would. I tried some of Mr Toyoda's curry rice, which was really tasty! I went on Skype, and then got into bed about midnight. While dozing off, I suddenly could feel the entire ground moving, the house moving, the bed moving... There was an earthquake!!!! My first 'proper' night in Japan, where I didn't have to worry about my bags, and there was an earthquake! I wondered what I should do, whether I should do the earthquake procedure of standing in a doorway, but since I didn't hear Mayumi or her husband moving in the room next to mine, I presumed that it was simply a light earthquake and just carried on lying in bed. It earthquake and just carried on lying in bed. It lasted about 20 seconds, and was quite weird.
Today, I woke up fairly late, but Mayumi had told me I was allowed, and I should have, a lie-in to recover from the amount of solo travelling I had done since arriving, which is true xD I gave her the Biddestone apron, the Twinings tea and the Lacock fudge, she liked the fudge and loved the tea, (I told her she should have it with milk) was amazed that the Queen drinks the same stuff, and is now wearing the apron. I still can't believe I actually survived the most difficult part of my week in Japan! I have about 9000￥ left, which should be fine as all that is only for food really. Mayumi had a friend round for a crossstitch related conversation (haha) so I have retreated upstairs... this computer is like my sanctuary of Englishness! It's weird being here though... Again I am pretty damn far away from everyone and everything, I can get the gist of a sentence spoken in fairly fast Japanese, if not the words, but I really do have to think hard and carefully to be able to understand it. Hard work T_T
Still, I am lucky to be here, even if there is an epic time difference! Ja, mata!
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