Tokyo Return, Day 1

Monday morning, and time to head back to Tokyo. Hiroko will also be going home to Komatsu, so we meet in the hotel lobby and check out, then head for the train station once more. We take the short trip to Nagoya's main station and stop at a breakfast shop/bakery called Cafe Denmark to get something to eat.

All too soon, it's time for me to catch my train, so we head for the shinkansen tracks. Tears again from both of us - this has been a wonderful time together, and we will miss seeing each other, but we will continue our e-mail discussions. Hopefully we will have an opportunity to get together some time in the future, perhaps when Hiroko comes back to the U.S. to finish her university studies.

I climb aboard and find my seat, loading my excess of bags in the overhead compartment. My seat mate is interested in the Expo 2005 bags; although his English is limited and my Japanese is still rather spotty, we manage to have a short discussion about how I liked the Expo visit. He wanted to know if we had visited the Hitachi pavilion; turns out he works for Hitachi. We exchange business cards as he leaves the train at Yokohama.

During the ride, I get some more journaling done, and see an interesting sight along the way. There was an area of shallow water just a little north of Nagoya where small motorboats (we would call them johnboats in Missouri - flat bottoms with a small engine on the back, used for fishing) were running back and forth, and people were wading and reaching into the water at intervals. I think they were harvesting shellfish of some sort.

The train arrives at Tokyo Station, and I grab all of my stuff, ask the station master where the taxi stand is (he points me in the correct direction), and find a cab to go to the hotel. (I could go by subway, but it's a bit of a distance and I've got far too many things to carry today.) The taxi driver is female, which is a bit of a surprise, but nice. I hand her the map that has the address and directions in Japanese, and she checks her GPS system to find the most direct route. It works; as we get close, I indicate that this is the area, and she and I are both happy.

The hotel tells me that I am early and my room will not be available for about 1-1/2 hours. That's okay - I got in a bit sooner than I expected, so I leave the most awkward of the bags there and head back out. I've got some additional shopping to do, and I would really like to get some lunch.

Shopping is done, lunch is eaten, and I head back for the hotel to check in. They have received a shipment of suitcases (the MTP crowd is arriving in force), but mine are not in the pile - perhaps at a later time today. After settling into my room, I catch up on e-mails and upload my latest journal entries, then decide it's time to go look at cameras one more time.

Shinjuku is not hard to find, and with a little walking, I soon locate the store where I bought my camcorder. I have an English copy of the user's guide to pick up, and they have that. Then I look around - I am still thinking about getting a small still-shot camera for those times when the camcorder is too bulky to carry. I also look at MP3 players - not for music but for possible use to store videos and play them (when hooked to a computer). While I see several varieties there, I do not find any that seem to have everything I want - mostly a very large storage capacity and USB2 connectivity. I think that I will probably have better luck looking for the larger capacity ones in the U.S.

I'd really like to get an ultra compact camera, specifically the Fuji FinePic, but it's rather pricey (over $400) and it uses a different memory card, which means I would have to buy yet another type of storage card. I settle on a Canon IXY (a mid-sized one, 5.0 Mpixels); while it uses its own battery packs (which are somewhat expensive but generally have a good use life), it also uses the same SD media cards that the camcorder uses, so I can interchange cards with the two cameras. I've had an IXY camera before (the American equivalent is the PowerShot SD400) and they take great pictures. This one isn't much larger than the Fuji ultra, so it will work nicely as a pocket camera. I also pick up a spare battery.

One more stop on another floor of the electronics store, where I find the latest Naruto video game, one that my son had asked that I look for when I got back to Tokyo (it was released on July 14). He's going to be happy, I think - not only did I get the game, but it came with a game machine cover done up as one of the characters.

Back to the hotel, where we discover that not only are my bags not there, they're apparently scheduled to arrive on the wrong date (Wednesday instead of Monday). I'm busily thinking about what I have that I can wash out and re-wear, when the desk clerk (who has been on the phone with the delivery service) tells me that the bags are within range and can be delivered sometime tonight. She is apologetic that it may be a late delivery, but I assure her that I won't mind coming down to get them regardless of what time they arrive. I thank her profusely for her help and head back to my room.

The bags arrive much earlier than any of us expected - thank goodness! I won't have to hang laundry tonight after all.....

As the evening progresses, I see Japanese and American teachers arrive. We exchange greetings - we'll get a chance to talk tomorrow morning when we all meet at the Science Museum for our first meetings. I spend my remaining free time working on this blog and finishing the Week 5 report, to be posted on XOOPS.

Then it's off to bed.