I'm home
A little hard to believe. Feels like today was actually 3 separate days.
I woke up early in Hikone and went to see the castle there. It was, naturally, snowing. At least it was a nice gentle snow and not like sleet/rain as it had been in Obama City the day before. I passed by some Ohmi highschool kids -- I didn't realize it was right there, or I would have tried to go see it. (Ohmi has represented Shiga prefecture 5 times out of the last 10 Koshiens... Kitani from Rakuten and Ogura from Chunichi are both from there) I walked across town and climbed to the top of Hikone Castle, which is way up at the top of a hill. I have the impression that if it's not snowing, you can actually see the castle from below, but for me, I couldn't see the actual castle until I got up there. But from up there, I could see the Ohmi school and stadium, which are huge! (They apparently use the prefectural stadium for their home ground. WTF.)
The castle itself was actually not all that interesting. There isn't much inside it and the stairs are steep. I believe if the weather is nice, you get a lovely view of Lake Biwa from there, but again, crappy weather kinda puts a damper on it.
I also think there is more stuff there that I didn't see, but I was kind of in a hurry -- I checked out of my hotel at 8:30am and had to be back at Hikone station by 10:20am to catch a train down to Nagoya. I got to the station in plenty of time, fortunately...
Hikone 10:16->10:21 Maibara
Maibara 10:30->11:03 Ogaki
Ogaki 11:10->11:40 Nagoya
Nagoya 11:54->11:59 Hisaya-Odori
I had to find a bathroom in Nagoya station and then find the subway, which took longer than expected.
Then, met up with![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the2belo in the subway station. What's stupid is, we wandered around town for like 10-15 minutes trying to find a place to eat, and then ended up at a place right back inside the station about 10 meters from where we started. Sigh. If I was more proactive I would have looked up information about some places to go. (I just did. Hm, Sekai no Yamachan doesn't open until 5, but you know what? They have locations in Tokyo, so dammit I should go there sometime.)
Anyway, lunch with Jeff was good, can't really remember the last time I saw him, funny to catch him a few days after he got back from the US and a few days before I go...
I went to the Nagoya Dome on a whim after that -- figured I'd see if they still had Tatsunami retirement goods, so I could get cheer sticks (my old Dragons cheer sticks are cool but totally warping because I've had them for like 4 years). They had a ton of Tatsunami stuff left -- but even crazier, today was apparently a Tatsunami Thanks Party (立浪選手に感謝する会) at the Dome from 6:30pm, and people were already lining up there at 2:30pm! Yikes! Anyway, the other weird thing is that Dragons Road is empty, I guess they clear it between seasons, still surreal to walk to the Dome in a big generic hallway.
Then I walked to Ozone station, which takes bloody forever -- seriously, I always forget how ridiculously far it is from the Dome -- and started my journey home.
Ozone 14:23->14:30 Kanayama
Kanayama 14:46->15:30 Toyohashi
Toyohashi 15:34->16:10 Hamamatsu
Hamamatsu 16:19->17:31 Shizuoka
I was totally asleep on the train from Hamamatsu actually -- it was heading to Numazu, and my idea was to get off in Shizuoka to eat dinner, because I had never really BEEN to Shizuoka before. Numazu is also Shizuoka prefecture, but Shizuoka City has like 800000 people and Numazu has like 200000, so I was figuring the chances of interesting food would also be 4 times as much. But I almost slept through the stop at Shizuoka. Fortunately, I stayed awake long enough to get off the train.
As it is, I walked around Shizuoka City for about 15-20 minutes. The area near the station is really neat, there's an underground shopping mall of sorts, and the overground shopping mall is pretty busy too, it was a lot like Tokyo. I mean, there were Starbuckses and McDonald's every two blocks or so, and there was even a Tully's.
I ended up eating dinner at an omurice place in a department store in the station, though. Had a croquette on omurice with hayashi sauce, which was really good, but the croquette wasn't so good. Eh. Then...
Shizuoka 19:30 -> 22:42 Tokyo
Tokyo 22:45 -> 23:10 Akabane
By the way, that is not a typo, that first train, it was literally 3 hours and 12 minutes of one ride. I think it's the only one per day that runs local from Shizuoka all the way to Tokyo on one train, without changing in Atami or Numazu. But even crazier, this was the nicest local train EVER! It was basically like a Shinkansen almost, with cushy seats with footrests and adjustable backs so you could lie down, and curtains on the windows, and several bathrooms on the train... yeah. But entirely unreserved and entirely useable by cheapo Seishun 18 people like me.
Unfortunately, it was so comfortable I slept for most of the trip. Which means now it's 2am and I don't want to sleep because I spent most of today sleeping on trains.
But I'm going to try anyway. Tomorrow hopefully I'll post some pictures and a map about the trip...
I woke up early in Hikone and went to see the castle there. It was, naturally, snowing. At least it was a nice gentle snow and not like sleet/rain as it had been in Obama City the day before. I passed by some Ohmi highschool kids -- I didn't realize it was right there, or I would have tried to go see it. (Ohmi has represented Shiga prefecture 5 times out of the last 10 Koshiens... Kitani from Rakuten and Ogura from Chunichi are both from there) I walked across town and climbed to the top of Hikone Castle, which is way up at the top of a hill. I have the impression that if it's not snowing, you can actually see the castle from below, but for me, I couldn't see the actual castle until I got up there. But from up there, I could see the Ohmi school and stadium, which are huge! (They apparently use the prefectural stadium for their home ground. WTF.)
The castle itself was actually not all that interesting. There isn't much inside it and the stairs are steep. I believe if the weather is nice, you get a lovely view of Lake Biwa from there, but again, crappy weather kinda puts a damper on it.
I also think there is more stuff there that I didn't see, but I was kind of in a hurry -- I checked out of my hotel at 8:30am and had to be back at Hikone station by 10:20am to catch a train down to Nagoya. I got to the station in plenty of time, fortunately...
Hikone 10:16->10:21 Maibara
Maibara 10:30->11:03 Ogaki
Ogaki 11:10->11:40 Nagoya
Nagoya 11:54->11:59 Hisaya-Odori
I had to find a bathroom in Nagoya station and then find the subway, which took longer than expected.
Then, met up with
the2belo in the subway station. What's stupid is, we wandered around town for like 10-15 minutes trying to find a place to eat, and then ended up at a place right back inside the station about 10 meters from where we started. Sigh. If I was more proactive I would have looked up information about some places to go. (I just did. Hm, Sekai no Yamachan doesn't open until 5, but you know what? They have locations in Tokyo, so dammit I should go there sometime.) Anyway, lunch with Jeff was good, can't really remember the last time I saw him, funny to catch him a few days after he got back from the US and a few days before I go...
I went to the Nagoya Dome on a whim after that -- figured I'd see if they still had Tatsunami retirement goods, so I could get cheer sticks (my old Dragons cheer sticks are cool but totally warping because I've had them for like 4 years). They had a ton of Tatsunami stuff left -- but even crazier, today was apparently a Tatsunami Thanks Party (立浪選手に感謝する会) at the Dome from 6:30pm, and people were already lining up there at 2:30pm! Yikes! Anyway, the other weird thing is that Dragons Road is empty, I guess they clear it between seasons, still surreal to walk to the Dome in a big generic hallway.
Then I walked to Ozone station, which takes bloody forever -- seriously, I always forget how ridiculously far it is from the Dome -- and started my journey home.
Ozone 14:23->14:30 Kanayama
Kanayama 14:46->15:30 Toyohashi
Toyohashi 15:34->16:10 Hamamatsu
Hamamatsu 16:19->17:31 Shizuoka
I was totally asleep on the train from Hamamatsu actually -- it was heading to Numazu, and my idea was to get off in Shizuoka to eat dinner, because I had never really BEEN to Shizuoka before. Numazu is also Shizuoka prefecture, but Shizuoka City has like 800000 people and Numazu has like 200000, so I was figuring the chances of interesting food would also be 4 times as much. But I almost slept through the stop at Shizuoka. Fortunately, I stayed awake long enough to get off the train.
As it is, I walked around Shizuoka City for about 15-20 minutes. The area near the station is really neat, there's an underground shopping mall of sorts, and the overground shopping mall is pretty busy too, it was a lot like Tokyo. I mean, there were Starbuckses and McDonald's every two blocks or so, and there was even a Tully's.
I ended up eating dinner at an omurice place in a department store in the station, though. Had a croquette on omurice with hayashi sauce, which was really good, but the croquette wasn't so good. Eh. Then...
Shizuoka 19:30 -> 22:42 Tokyo
Tokyo 22:45 -> 23:10 Akabane
By the way, that is not a typo, that first train, it was literally 3 hours and 12 minutes of one ride. I think it's the only one per day that runs local from Shizuoka all the way to Tokyo on one train, without changing in Atami or Numazu. But even crazier, this was the nicest local train EVER! It was basically like a Shinkansen almost, with cushy seats with footrests and adjustable backs so you could lie down, and curtains on the windows, and several bathrooms on the train... yeah. But entirely unreserved and entirely useable by cheapo Seishun 18 people like me.
Unfortunately, it was so comfortable I slept for most of the trip. Which means now it's 2am and I don't want to sleep because I spent most of today sleeping on trains.
But I'm going to try anyway. Tomorrow hopefully I'll post some pictures and a map about the trip...
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Anyway, we found your miso katsu, so that was good.
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