How about that!!! It was a long flight over, and of course I lost a day on the way. I left BWI at 12:30 mid-day on Saturday, April 25, and got to Nagoya at 5:30ish pm on Sunday. Alex spent a couple of hours on trains to meet me, and then we reversed the process (after dark) to get back to Tsuruga. Raining gently by the time we got here, so caught a taxi from the station to Alex's apartment - thank goodness. Immediate impressions of Japan: very helpful and nice people, extremely clean and well cared for public places, and thank goodness for a great train system!
Giggle of the evening in my state of bleary eyed fatigue - I was surprised to see the driver on the right-hand side of the taxi, (c'mon Trout, realize where you are!) he was wearing white gloves, and there were lovely white lacy covers on the seats. Alex warned me not to open the taxi door, it would be done for us. It was amazing to hear Alex guide the driver in Japanese. Got delivered safely to Leopalace, dragged luggage upstairs and then went for a walk to get something to eat. About all that was open at that hour in close proximity was a convenience store, so we got bento boxes to take home and heat in the microwave. Bento boxes are complete meals, in this case on styrofoam plates. I had absolutely no problem sleeping at night in spite of the fact that my body was supposed to think it was daytime.
Monday morning Alex had a Dr's appt. because he has been dealing with an ear infection. He said, "Haven't had one of those since I was a kid, have I?" Right-e-o! His co-teacher, interpreter, "HELP!"er and friend, Kaori, drove him to his appointment, and then came with us on a train adventure to Sabae, 45 minutes N of Tsuruga. I asked Alex, How far? and he tells me times because that is his reference point. OK, makes sense! The day started out chilly but pretty, and took a nose-dive from there. It got cooler, windy and more-than-occasionally rainy. The above picture is in Sabae in a park that had acres of azaleas on the brink of blowing into full bloom.
The annual Azalea Festival starts tomorrow - warm and sunny today (Tues), and I would bet a lot more have opened up than what we saw, and what we saw were impressive.
Alex found a smart cat sheltered under a bench!
Sabae is famous for soba noodles (buckwheat), red panda bears, and eye-glasses frames, some of which are hand-crafted out of prime woods. So, we had soba noodles for lunch hoping the rain would go away. Noodles were kind of tough and very bland so we added lots of seasoning to our soup, and the rain didn't go.... Went to the zoo in the azalea park to see the red pandas, discovered that it was closed on Mondays.... Did not think to take umbrellas, so we bought some for all of $2.50 each at the train station.
Soba noodle lunch. Tough to catch slippery noodles in broth!
Alex & Kaori in noodle shop.
Out of order, but Kaori and me in the azalea rain.
1 comment:
Good morning, I am at work so I could get on line. I was thinking if you are looking for something to do, run down to Nagasaki and look at the shadows on the wall. Also about 30 years ago they had some really good lamb and beef at some of the resturants. Enjoying your blog as always, get your mum to decribe some of her feelings and first impressions. Is the 8 GB stick working out for you and for her so she can down load all of the pictures she had better be taking while she it there. Take care and enjoy. The weather has gone from 90 degrees plus down to just under 60 degrees here. 35 degree drop since Tuesday afternoon.
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