{"id":45,"date":"2007-11-06T20:38:05","date_gmt":"2007-11-07T01:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=45"},"modified":"2014-08-18T17:20:35","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T22:20:35","slug":"travel-day-nagano-to-sendai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=45","title":{"rendered":"Travel Day. Nagano to Sendai."},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was a travel day from Nagano to Sendai<\/strong> for the most part, just like the headline says. I sent a third package home, and my luggage is still heavy. I still don’t get it. Maybe the junk in my bags is breeding?
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The shinkansen<\/em> is no longer exciting for me. Instead it makes me sleepy. I guess I’m finally used to that bit about being here. The ride from Nagano to Omiya on the Asami<\/em> was nice, albeit a bit foggy. One really nice part– the Asami<\/em> cars have a baggage nook I can stick my Big American Suitcase into.<\/span><\/p>\n

From Omiya to Sendai, I rode on the Max Yamabiko, which is a double-decker shinkansen<\/em> . It’s pretty cool, except the bit where I had to lug my suitcase upstairs, because there are no baggage nooks. I had to resort to the usual “tuck it behind the back row” trick.<\/p>\n

The Max cars are also nice because each car has a little built-in store<\/strong>, so there’s no waiting for the carts to come down the middle of the train cars. They even sell beer, to make the trip a little more relaxing. But, I wasn’t in the mood for beer at 1 in the afternoon. It’s just too early for me.<\/p>\n

Finding a Hotel in Tokyo<\/h3>\n

One thing that really gave me some peace of mind was finally<\/em> finding a hotel for my 6 days in Tokyo. I was up until 4 a.m. last night trying to find a hotel free for all 6 days, and coming up with nothing. I don’t mind smoking rooms for a night, but for 6? No thanks. So I kept at it. Then I had a brainstorm in the shower this morning, and hit Travelocity<\/strong>. I had tried Expedia, Rakuten, and hotels.co.jp, and had no luck. <\/span><\/p>\n

Travelocity had a nice hotel in Shinjuku<\/strong>, which is where I wanted to be in the first place. Shinjuku is a great location because it’s where every line runs, so you can pretty much go anywhere from there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Having the hotel straightened out took a huge weight off my shoulders. I’m sure I could have found something when I got there, but I might not have found something nice<\/em>. For most of my trip, I haven’t been too obsessed with getting hotels, because it hasn’t been too hard. But certain cities can be a pain to find rooms in. Tokyo and Kyoto come to mind. Osaka and Nara were mildly irritating, but not impossible. Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Nagano, and Sendai were pretty easy.<\/p>\n

My advice is plain common sense– if you’re going to a big tourist destination, try to nail down a room a bit sooner than you think you’ll need it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Arrival in Sendai<\/h3>\n

I have arrived in Sendai, which is on the northeast coast of Honshu, the main island. It’s about 2 hours north of Tokyo by shinkansen<\/em>. When I got here, I did my usual “Find the information booth” dance, and got some pamphlets, but they were all in Japanese only. It’s a bit frustrating. I wanted some good info on seeing Matsushima in English, but no luck.<\/p>\n

I also wanted to see if I could make a short trip to Mt. Zao before heading to Tokyo on Thursday, but that’s going to be a bust. From what I gathered, the buses don’t run all the way to the crater, and only stop at the hot spring. To get to the crater, you have to rent a car in Sendai, and I’m not doing that. Drive on the left? No thanks.<\/p>\n

After getting info, I checked in at another Comfort Inn. Another nice room for 6,250 yen a night (go AAA discount<\/strong>). Then some time to play with the TV– very nice. It’s HD, and I think if I feed it money, I can see the HD cable channels. I’m not too sure about that yet. For some reason, someone’s ad text is all over my CNN-J channel, and I can’t get rid of it.<\/p>\n

It reminds me of the guy in The Diamond Age<\/em> who got infected by a virus that made him see Indian TV ads in the corner of his eyes 24\/7, and he eventually went insane and killed himself.<\/p>\n

But it’s not that bad. It’s more background noise than anything else.<\/p>\n

Wandering in Sendai<\/h3>\n

I did some strolling around Sendai. It’s a very lively city, and a very cold one, too. There are some nice shopping arcades as well. I found some department stores and raided their basements for dinner. I scored some chicken-katsu, a potato croquette, and a sandwich with a chocolate croissant.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

On the way back, I saw a very busy taiyaki <\/em>vendor, and I would have stopped if I didn’t already have food… and hunger. Taiyaki<\/em> is a fish-shaped pastry filled with sweet red bean paste, and in this shop’s case, white pastry cream. I will<\/strong> go back there tomorrow to sample some of their taiyaki<\/em>. The line was huge<\/strong>, so it must be good.<\/p>\n

The rest of the evening will be spent resting, doing laundry, and puttering around. Matsushima<\/strong> will take a lot out of me tomorrow, so I need to rest up for it.<\/p>\n

The longer I’m in Japan, the more I’m loving it here.<\/strong> For a while, I was really wanting to go home. Now I really want to explore more here, but that’s not in the cards for now.<\/p>\n

I’ll worry about that when I get home, I guess.<\/p>\n

I do think I’m going to get serious about looking for work here when I can get my Japanese to an acceptable level. Japan is fascinating, mystifying, and a hell of a lot of fun all at once, but I need to seriously level up my language skills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was a travel day from Nagano to Sendai for the most part, just like the headline says. I sent a third package home, and my luggage is still heavy. I still don’t get it. Maybe the junk in my bags is breeding? The shinkansen is no longer exciting for me. Instead it makes me […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[285,894,827,289,507,273,284,28,290,288,895,287],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan-trip","category-travel","tag-asami","tag-japan-trip","tag-japan2007","tag-matsushima","tag-max-yamabiko","tag-nagano","tag-sendai","tag-shinkansen","tag-taiyaki","tag-the-diamond-age","tag-travel","tag-travelocity","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions\/1532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}