Just like the trip in the spring, I didn’t sleep that well on the second night. I think it got better after that so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I messaged my old coworker yesterday and he was free today. He moved from Osaka down to Wakayama, about an hour away by express train. It’s an hour and a half by regular train and that costs a lot less but it’s nice to have a reserved seat on a faster train. I had to take the green car on the way back because that’s the only thing that the ticket machine offered. Even then it was only $25. The local train only costs about $6.50.

I started the day at Tully’s. I’m not sure why I like the breakfast hot dog so much but it’s great.

Yesterday I spent close to an hour and TEN WHOLE YEN printing out a sheet that I was supposed to show the conductor and then I found out I can just go to a ticket machine and stick in the credit card I used and it print out a ticket! I should be able to use an app but it looks like the JR West app is limited to the Japanese App Store. Phooey. And the conductor knows what seats should be filled and hardly ever asks to see the reserved seat ticket (I’m not going to chance it.)

My buddy took me up the mountain to see the susuki grass. It’s supposed to look the best this time of year. It’s blooming or whatever it is that grasses do. My dad was the horticulturist, not me.

Here’s some awful pictures of me up on the mountain. The pictures aren’t awful, but I must be getting vain because I think I look old. It’s actually because I am old.

We also had curry udon. They were out of rice when we got there a lot of the selections on the ticket machine were sold out. When we finished eating I noticed they’d cooked more rice and the sold out items were available again. I shouldn’t complain because the curry udon was some of the best I’ve had. I took a picture but the phone appears to have eaten it. I’ll tell you now it looked like curry udon.

We drove about an hour to a lookout point which looked close from the mountain but definitely wasn’t. It’s near my buddy’s fishing spot and it’s where the samurai would watch the foreign ships approaching Osaka’s harbor. If nothing else, it was pretty.

And another picture of an old guy. There was a nice Japanese garden and some people were fishing. The waves were choppy and they said they were having no luck at all.

My buddy had to go to the dentist at 5 so we went for an early dinner. Unfortunately a lot of restaurants in Japan close from 3pm to 5pm to prep for dinner. He found one on Google that was supposed to be open but once again Google was wrong. He found a place near the lacquerware district in Kainan just south of Wakayama City. I had the chicken and Shiso spring rolls. It was rather tasty.

The set also came with drink and a dessert. I picked Calpis (also known as Calpico in the US) and zenzai.

After dinner my buddy dropped me off at the Kainan train station and I just missed the 4:37pm express train. They come once per hour so I wasn’t completely out of luck. As I said earlier, I couldn’t really figure out the ticket machine and had to get a seat in the more expensive green car where I sat in front of a couple of guys who didn’t shut up the whole time back. Oh well.

And that’s about it. Tomorrow morning I have to pack up and head to Okayama Station. Then I get to figure out how to get to the airport where I’m going to meet my sister. The web site with the bus schedules is down. With the big PHP security thing going on, a lot of Japanese web sites were taken down for updates. I’m hoping I updated this site correctly (which was another reason it took me so long to get out of the room in the morning).