Leaving Japan

At last, we have reached the day I leave Japan. I'm currently in the Centrair International Airport in Nagoya. Brad's flight left at 8:00 so I got up early to see him off(thus, the sunrise pic. I've been up since 4:30 and at the airport since 6:15). My flight's not until 11:30 so I'm just hanging out here until boarding time. This past week and a half has been a few bad days sandwiching some really really good ones. Today is one of the former…I'm trying to think of the silver linings to this (meeting Amanda in Narita, spending 4 days with Katie), but it's not easy. I'm not ready to leave, because I have so much more I want to do here: so much to see and experience, a semester to finish, and all of that. And it's getting cut short.

Let’s go back to happier things, shall we? I’ll start where I left off, on Monday. Monday was our recharge day from 2 days of traveling, and it was very relaxing. It was Vernal Equinox Day, which apparently qualifies as a national holiday. XD I went to breakfast with Jade before she left, and hit Sapna for lunch and Cainz for a bit more shopping. Other than that, though, I stayed in my room and cleaned. It was really odd going into Beisia...some of the shelves are completely empty because all of the instant food is being shipped north for the earthquake victims.

On Tuesday, Brad and Addie and I went back to Osaka. The first half of the day was pretty much a repeat of my last trip – we had kebab sandwiches from the same restaurant and then went to the aquarium. It was still awesome, even after having been just a few weeks ago. Have some more pictures and a video! :)

After that, we went to a shopping mall area close to the aquarium, where I had gelato! It was yummy. We also found a traditional shop that had fans and really pretty wall-hangings. I got one with goldfish on it! There was also a Hello Kitty store. :3

We wanted to go see the Osaka Science Museum, but we were unable to. All Japanese museums are closed on Mondays, or Tuesdays if the Monday of that week was a national holiday. Therefore, all museums in Osaka were closed. So, instead, we went to Shinsaibashi for some browsing. Shinsaibashi is one of the more famous shopping districts in Osaka – it has lots of stuff! What I found interesting is that in addition to modern clothing stores and flower shops, they had kimono shops! You could see fabrics in the back and all sorts of designs and people working on yukatas and kimonos.

For dinner, we went to Shakey’s Pizza, a pizza buffet. It was a really nice place! If IKEA decided to make a pizza buffet, it would look like Shakey’s. They even had Swedish meatballs! It was definitely not American pizza, but beggars can’t be choosers. :)

Our last stop in Osaka was Book Off in Shinsaibashi. Book Off is a huge book and music and videogame resale shop. This one was 4 stories tall! One floor was entirely devoted to manga, another to music and video games. On the top floor, I found the cooking section. Guess who now has a dessert cookbook in Japanese? :D

Yesterday I checked out of my room and went to Nagoya. Checkout was a piece of cake! I just had to finish cleaning the kitchen, check in my bike, take out the trash and have Iga-san come by (our student services coordinator) to do an inspection. Then, I turned in my key and we took a quick trip to Vidal before hopping on the bus to Hikone Station.

Our trip to Nagoya was not nearly as smooth as we had planned. We decided to take a train to Maibara, ride the shinkansen to Nagoya and arrive around 12:30. We’d then rent a locker to put our suitcases in, head out to The Little World Museum of Man (more about that in a minute), then on the way back pick our bags up and check into the hotel to go to bed early. The Little Museum of Man is about 50 minutes outside of Nagoya, and requires a train ride followed by a bus ride to get there. It’s an open-air anthropological museum that is basically like the Epcot World Showcase on steroids. There are 22 countries represented, and they all have cool displays. I really wanted to go.

Of course, on the one day it mattered life did not go our way. Due to some weird circumstances I don’t really understand, the train out of Hikone was 20 minutes late and the one we wanted was canceled. So, we waited at the station for half an hour. Luckily we got there early enough that we got to Maibara in enough time to catch our shinkansen. That was a little frustrating as well, because we apparently only bought one of the 2 tickets we needed and the ticket guy knew no English and just repeated himself in Japanese we couldn’t understand. Finally a woman in the shinkansen area intervened for us and helped us out.

We got to Nagoya only to find that all of the lockers were full, so we decided to go to our hotel first and drop off our bags. The staff there were gracious enough to take our bags up to our room for us and everything. However, it took an extra 45 minutes to take care of that, so suddenly we were short on time. We decided to try and make it out to the Little World anyway, so we hopped on the train. We actually got fairly lucky – the station right by our hotel ran straight to Inuyama, the city where the bus stop was. It was a ways out there, though, and we didn’t arrive until almost 3. When we stopped at the tourist desk, the man informed us that we really wouldn’t have enough time to enjoy the museum so we should go another day. How disappointing! So, we headed back the way we came.

I thought the afternoon was going to be a complete loss, but there was hope. There was also a science museum at the SAME STOP as our hotel. So, we decided to go see if we still had time (it was 4 by this time) to enjoy it. We got there just in time! And it was awesome. :)

The museum had 6 floors, a life science building attachment and a planetarium. Besides the interactive portion on the first floor and the planetarium, we got to see all of it. There was a lot of cool stuff!

My favorite part was probably the section where they showed how everyday objects work. I learned about vending machines, sewing machines, and rice cookers. The life sciences area was a little lacking but the physics area was really cool.

When we got back to the hotel, we learned that the museum had only just opened on the 19th! So we had been walking around in a 4 day-old museum.

After we got back from the museum, we decided to go find dinner. I was craving katsu-curry, a fried cutlet (usually pork or chicken) with rice that’s covered in curry. Just 2 blocks down was a Coco’s Ichiban, a chain known for its delicious curry. Win! And it was indeed delicious.

Which brings us to today. Today will be a long day of flights! I have a 1.5-hour flight to Tokyo, followed by a 5-hour layover. I intend to enjoy my last Japanese lunch in that time (hopefully chahan and gyoza!) and do some exploring of the airport. My flight to Singapore leaves at 6 and I arrive there at 1 AM. I’ll let you all know when I arrive safely. Have a great week and I’ll see you in Singapore. :)