Today I made it back to Okazaki and Yamasa again.<\/p>\n
I got up early, and grabbed a shinkansen<\/em>, the Nozomi<\/em> from Tokyo to Nagoya. <\/p>\n I could have grabbed it in Shinagawa, which would have made more sense, but I know the way to Tokyo Station better, and I didn’t want to get lost and miss my train.<\/p>\n For those of you who don’t know, there are 3 kinds of shinkansen<\/em> (what we Americans call “bullet trains”) that run on the Tokaido Line from Tokyo to Nagoya, and on to Osaka and points further West. <\/p>\n First, there’s the Kodama<\/strong>. It stops just about everywhere. It’s fast in that it’s faster than an ordinary train, but it’s slow, because it stops a lot<\/em>. It’s handy if you live in a biggish small town, but it’s not the way to get anywhere really big in a hurry.<\/p>\n Next there’s the Hikari<\/strong>, which stops at fewer places, and is a lot faster. (And more expensive.) This is the train you take if you’re using a JR pass<\/strong>, or if you’re on a budget.<\/p>\n Then there’s the Nozomi<\/strong>, which is just a rocket on rails. It barely stops for anything, and I think it goes around 270-300 Km\/h or so. I know that I got from Tokyo to Nagoya in about a little less than 2 hours. The downside is that it’s not cheap<\/strong>. <\/p>\n Another downside: you can’t use it for free if you’re on a JR pass.<\/p>\n I grabbed a Nozomi <\/em>to Nagoya, and got there in a jiffy, then grabbed a variant of a limited express to Okazaki<\/strong>. That bit took about 30 minutes or so.<\/p>\n I was feeling adventurous, so I rode in the front of the train and watched out the front of the car. I don’t know why, but I like to do that.<\/p>\n It’s interesting to watch all of the hand gestures<\/strong> that the engineers, conductors, and construction workers use. I saw something about that on TV a while back. Apparently, it improves safety if you force your employees to confirm each action they’re supposed to take with a specific hand gesture. As long as I get there safely, I’m all for it. It doesn’t look silly if it saves lives.<\/p>\n I got to Okazaki at around 11:50, and got picked up with my 2 monstrous suitcases and was whisked over to the school. It’s a pretty short walk from the station if you’re not carrying 100 lbs of luggage, but add the luggage, and the distance suddenly seems much bigger.<\/p>\n Since everyone was at lunch, I had to wait a while. Bad timing on my part. Fortunately, there were a few people hanging around in the Customer Service department who could take care of me and get me processed. We got my room sorted out (Villa 5<\/strong>, yay!), and then I got a ride to my new digs.<\/p>\n As far as temporary apartments <\/strong>go, this one is very nice. It’s a studio-style apartment that’s been very recently built. It’s Japanese-style, but with a bed. (Thank God.) I love Japan, but I can’t handle futons. Last time I was here, I had excruciating futon-induced back spasms. Thankfully, there are some apartments here with western-style beds.<\/p>\n It was also built to take a magnitude 8.5 earthquake. That’s reassuring.<\/p>\n After a few minutes to unload and freshen up, it was back to campus for my first private lesson<\/strong> at 1:40, followed by a CALL seminar at 2:40. It was challenging and a fun to get back in the saddle, as it were.<\/p>\n By then, I was pretty much starving. I staggered over to the Mini Stop<\/strong> to get some food, then spent the rest of the day figuring out the apartment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today I made it back to Okazaki and Yamasa again. I got up early, and grabbed a shinkansen, the Nozomi from Tokyo to Nagoya. I could have grabbed it in Shinagawa, which would have made more sense, but I know the way to Tokyo Station better, and I didn’t want to get lost and miss […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5],"tags":[521,517,894,828,516,522,344,519,518,100,28,206,520,494,895,106],"class_list":["post-916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan-trip","category-japanese-language-study","category-travel","tag-apartments","tag-hikari","tag-japan-trip","tag-japan2011","tag-kodama","tag-living-in-japan","tag-luggage","tag-nagoy-station","tag-nozomi","tag-okazaki","tag-shinkansen","tag-suitcases","tag-tokyo-station","tag-trains","tag-travel","tag-yamasa","category-3-id","category-4-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\/916","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=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1540,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions\/1540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Arriving in Nagoya, With Just Enough Time to Change Trains<\/h3>\n
I Get to Stay Here? Really?<\/h3>\n