We're in Nagano.

It’s Thursday afternoon, April 3rd.  We’ve been in Nagano since yesterday afternoon.  A much quieter change of pace!  We took the Shinkansen (also known as “The Bullet Train”) from Tokyo.  The trip only took about 90 minutes (even though it was scheduled for longer) and was very smooth sailing.  The trip to the Shinkansen was anything but.  Our travel agent had hired a service to take us by private van from our hotel to the Tokyo train station, and when the women got to the lobby to pick us up she immediately started tut-tutting about our luggage.

“What’s wrong?” we asked her. 

“Your luggage,” she said.  “It’s too much.  No place for it on the train.” 

“What?” we asked, not understanding. 

“Those smaller ones, fine” she said, pointing to our carry-on bags.  “Big ones…no place for them.”

We all looked at each other worriedly. 

“Well, let’s just go,” she said.  “We’ll go.”

We spent the entire trip in the car trying to get her to explain what we should do.

“You should mail them to Nagano yesterday.”

“Uh…we can’t do that.  It’s now today.”

“Yes, but that’s what you should do.”  Clearly, we were hitting some sort of language barrier here.  Either that, or the Japanese have a much better way of managing time than we do. 

“Can you make overnight bags for Nagano, and send your luggage to the airport [for your return trip to the United States] now?” she asked.

“No!”

“Tsk, tsk.  Your travel agent should have told you this.  Japanese people don’t carry big bags when they travel.  Only Europeans and Americans.  I have heard of trains in Europe where they have places for the big bags.  And the train you’ll take to the airport on Friday has a space for bags.  But this one?  The Shinkansen?  No space.  I don’t know what yoer’ going to do.”

“Will you be able to stay with us when we get to the Shinkansen to help us ask questions?”

“No.”

So, by the time we reached the train station, we were all quite concerned what would happen. 
Cutting to the chase:  Nothing happened.  The Shinkansen was nearly empty, and there were plenty of places to tuck our luggage away for the short trip.  She worked us all up for nothing.
Nagano is nice.  Cooler, fresher air (at least as compared to Tokyo).  It’s at the foothills of the “Japanese Alps”, and was the home of the 1998 Winter Olympics. 

Of course, the main reason we came here was so that the kids could go to see the GazettE in concert.  Kate and Sandra had already purchased tickets through a service back home,  and fortunately, the show was not sold out and Zach was able to buy a ticket as well.  The venue was a small one nearby the theater, and we were quite comfortable letting the kids go by themselves (we walked them to and from the theater).  They had a GREAT time!

Today we went to the Zenkoji temple, which is a very large and very important Buddhist temple in Nagano.  It was really lovely.  It’s up on a hill overlooking Nagano City, and there are many gates to walk through to get there.  After you walk through the main gate, there is a road of vendors along the path selling all sorts of little trinkets.  There were also noodle shops.  We saw a man making fresh soba noodles from scratch.  We hit that restaurant on the way back and all enjoyed our very fresh soba.  (I had mine cold style, the others had theirs in hot broth.) 

We’re all just kind of laying low right now, relaxing after our whirlwind week before we head out for our big journey home tomorrow:  Bullet train from Nagano to Tokyo (approx 2 hours), Express Train from Tokyo to the Airport (approx 1.5 hours), Flight from Tokyo to Seattle (approx 9.5 hours), customs and immigration at Sea-Tac (about 1 hour), then our limo ride from SeaTac to Sammamish (about 40 minutes).  Gah!  I’m getting exhausted just thinking about it!

Comments

[Heather Irish]

LOL! I watch a lot of cartoons so your description created some very funny ideas in my head!!!