Today is a travel day, we are taking the train to Toyko because we have a date tomorrow with family.  Rather than travel with all our luggage, we took out what we thought we needed and took the larger pieces back to Naozumi’s house and stashed it there.  With loaded backpacks, we checked out of our family hotel and headed down the tollway toward Osaka.  It was much different in the daylight, lots to see, a little bit easier too since now we know the system and have yen in hand.  The first challenge was returning the rental car, following the GPS only gets you so far, we went in circles trying to find the space, but figured it was good practice for when we have to get to the airport to go home.

Next stop, the train station, we bought tickets to get to Shin-Osaka and then to Toyko via the Shinkansen.  The Shinkansen is the famous bullet train, since 1964 it has been operating on a precise schedule.  We took the Nozomi line in to Toyko Station, then transferred to Shinjuku station and got off.  The mass of humanity in the train station was overwhelming, I just tucked in behind Rich and let him part the seas.  We stand so much taller and wider than the locals, they don’t hesitate to get out of the way.

From the Shinjuku station, we found our way to the street level and after consulting the map for a few minutes, Rich asked a young man if he spoke English, he politely said “no, no, no” but an older guy was walking by and stopped to help.  We told him the hotel we were looking for and he found it on the map and sent us on our way.  A fairly quick walk and we checked in to the Washington Main Hotel.

Our room is quaint, it has three single beds lined up in a row.  The toilet has all the same controls we’ve seen on the other ones, but this time they offer a description in English too.  The air conditioning only works when you are in the room, but there are night shirts on each of the beds.  Of course, they are built for smaller folk, Josh put his on and couldn’t move his arms, he looked like the TRex from Meet the Robinsons, Great big head, little bitty arms!