Today we left Osaka to go to Hikari to visit my aunt and my cousin. We’d already packed the night before and sent my duffel onto Tokyo, so it wasn’t hard to get ready to go. My duffel seems to be on its last legs and that’s kind of sad. I’ve had it for seven years and I think it cost me a whole ¥1000. It’s a perfect size and has held up but what do you expect for such a cheap duffel?

Anyway, we went back to Pronto and we saw the dude. The other interesting thing we saw were two women putting on a ton of makeup. They looked good afterwards, but couldn’t they do that at home? I suppose apartments are a lot smaller here.

It takes three trains to get to Hikari, and the middle one is the bullet train. If you get a railpass you have to take the slowest Kodama, but if you just pay for a ticket on the N700 Nozomi there are two faster trains that stop in Tokuyama every day.

For lunch we had ekiben! It wasn’t bad. I’ve never had a great ekiben, but they’re usually pretty good.

Tokuyama is now called Shunan, but renaming a train station seems to take a lot more work than changing the name of a city. The Tokuyama train station has been improved and now there’s even an elevator! One of the local train lines is the Gantokusen and it’s a one-car diesel train! Most of the trains in Japan are electric, powered by overhead lines.

We got on the bigger four-car train to Hikari. I think this one goes all the way past Hiroshima, about 114 miles on a local train.

Hikari is pretty small. The station has no elevator and there’s no way to get from the eastbound tracks other than a overpass with stairs. It’s really not ADA compliant and I bet the average age here is pretty high.

My cousin had a fancy Balmuda toaster-oven and I didn’t know what the big deal was. It just looked like my Panasonic at first. But you see the top looks a little different? You pour in a teaspoon of water and it steams your bread before it gets toasted.

We had to try it and it really did make fluffy toast!

After that we went shopping at the mall in town. My sister and I love it because there’s a clothing store she really likes and I always find sales on insulated coffee mugs. I think it’s the best pricing for mugs that I see. Unfortunately, it’s the ONLY choice in town so my cousin doesn’t think that much of it.

We went to see my aunt, who has lost her vision, and she’s in her own little house behind my cousin’s. She comes over to my cousin’s house for dinner, but she spends the rest of the day alone in her house. She seems happy enough, but it still made me a little sad. It doesn’t help that we’re staying in a sad little hotel near the train station. At least the intarwebs seem to be working well.

I don’t know why, but I had a craving for tuna fish. Maybe because I’ve had it over and over in Japan before in breakfasts and in the combini sandwiches and I just hadn’t had it lately. Luckily my sister agreed to go to Tully’s and the coffee was pretty good today fir a change.

After that we went to Kuromon market, where we just walked through and didn’t really stop. There’s a pretty amazing assortment of food there but it was absolutely packed with Chinese tourists, many more than when I was there last. But it’s definitely worth seeing.

My sister also wanted to go to a unique ice cream store and that turned out to be next to a bakery. The bakery also had a separate café and restaurant and we ate in the bakery’s restaurant for lunch. The sandwich was huge and I ate most of it.

The ice cream looked great and tasted even better. It was almost like a light gelato.

I was tired and had to go back and take a nap. Then we wandered over to Nakazakicho to see all the hipster shops. My sister saw a sign for a bar, Landnneur, with craft beers and they had four taps all with Japanese craft beers! And all good, too. A couple of the breweries were new, but the beers were good. I had three of the smaller glasses and chatted with the owner.

The area has regular hipster stuff, like lots of vintage goods, and we even saw a Japanese food truck!

I wasn’t going to have another pork cutlet for dinner (been eating a log of them lately) but my sister picked a curry place and what’s better than katsu curry?

And that’s about it for this day. Tomorrow it’s off to the countryside to visit another cousin and my aunt.

A fun day with not that many pictures. We went to Pronto and saw the dude. I think my sister snuck a picture. He wasn’t just reading his book today, he had a little keyboard he was typing on.

Then we walked around and wasted some time before I got my fancy ¥4950 haircut. It really isn’t that much when you consider I got a shave, face massage, shampoo, cut, and another shampoo. I think it would be more in the states.

Then we went back to the omurice soufflé place and I got the same thing I got last time.

After that we got massages and I was ready to pass out. But we went to my cousin’s and saw several (2 of 4 living in the area) and one spouse at dinner. Sanma, my favorite.

And that’s about it.

I stayed out too late and then my blogging software was acting up. So much for timely updates.

On our first breakfast in Osaka my sister didn’t want to risk a smoky environment, especially not after she’d been sick for a while, so we went to the fancy bakery. You do get what you pay for there.

I think our second stop was our friend Amy’s favorite FamilyMart across the train tracks from the hotel.

After that we were off on our adventures to the biggest Muji in the world, and a weird clothing store my sister likes. It was getting late so we had lunch at Mos Burger.

Then we went to Toki for matcha shiratama.

I met an old work friend, Shohei Moriwaki, for dinner and we got okonomiyaki near where we used to work.

Later he took me to the old Mitsubishi Kita-Itami plant and the guard let us look in through the gate. Basically, he didn’t chase us off. They’re torn down all the old buildings and replaced them with gravel lots. The newer buildings that Renesas built are now being used by Mitsubishi and Renesas has moved completely out. What a difference!

After that I took the express train back to the station and called it a night.

We didn’t leave Toyama until the afternoon because some more friends were arriving mid-morning to say hello. We had a nice lunch and my sister and I left Toyama for Osaka at 2:17pm which put us at our hotel around 5:45pm. We had to take a Shinkansen two whole stops (20 whole minutes) from Toyama to Kanazawa and then an express train to get to Osaka. Eventually there’s supposed to be a Shinkansen going all the way to Osaka.

Once we got checked in we didn’t want to brave the crowds to look for dinner so we went across the street to Shake Shack. I didn’t get my usual burger but had a chicken burger and a banana-something milkshake. Both good, but not as good as the regular burger.

And that’s about it for today.

We were in Toyama to visit family friends but my sister got a travel migraine as she does from time to time so we didn’t do all that much today. On her insistence, we ditched her and went to the Rakkyokan onsen in the hills of Toyama. Also had tenzaru for lunch.

She was feeling better in the late afternoon so we did go see the new addition to the Favoré shopping mall near our friend’s house. Much bigger Uniqlo and Muji there now.

Had a nice dinner with the friends and that was the day.

My sister was arriving in Tokyo Narita airport and I told her I’d just meet her there because it was easier that way. I started out the day killing a lot of time in the hotel because why not? Then I went to Tully’s not because I didn’t want to see Miss C rabby, but because Hoshino Coffee has a limited breakfast menu and I didn’t feel like another pancake. Maybe I should’ve gone because the coffee at Tully’s isn’t that great.

After that I took the bus to Narita. The bus takes a couple of hours, but I was still early. I wandered around a bit and decided to get lunch. I know I’m not leaving Japan (the traditional time I eat at Fujiya) but I figured as long as I’m here…

After that I found an executive lounge I could get into and used their intarwebs. I watched some Netflix and also downloaded Xcode (all eight gigs of it). My sister was through customs before it finished.

I met her at the airport post office and then we got on the Keisei train for Ueno. We still had a couple of hours to kill when we got there and we had some not-very-good Thai food. Then it was off to Toyama!

Man, Tokyo is way too crowded for me. When I thought it was as crowded as it was going to get, I had to ride a train where we stuffed ourselves into the car. After watching three trains go by, you get to the front of the line and you push yourself in. It’s a mess.

But back to Hoshino coffee and the crabby girl.

I didn’t know what I was going to do today so I ran some errands first. I had to figure out how to get both me and my sister to Toyama from Narita airport tomorrow. First we have to get from Narita airport into town, and then (hopefully) a Shinkansen to Toyama. A third of the Joetsu shinkansen trains were ruined in a flood from Typhoon Hagbis and it’s all a mess. I couldn’t get a seat on the train I wanted to and the next train only had a few seats in the Green car (the expensive seats).

Then I had to run an errand for my sister to make sure her manicure appointment was correct and it was good that she sent me because it was NOT. I couldn’t get ahold of her when I was in the salon because she was answering some goddamn telemarketer on the phone. It all got sorted out and the woman at the salon was much nicer than a lot of the other people I met today in Tokyo.

Right around the corner from the salon is a Starbucks, and right next to the Starbucks was a sign that said “Swan Lake”. That’s a craft beer from Niigata that I was going to go visit but I really didn’t feel like the long bus ride out to the brewery.

See what you get when you eat at a Japanese taproom?

That beer made me a little sleepy so I took a nap.

I was wandering around and remembered my next door neighbor is always talking about the main Aikido dojo in Shinjuku. I went and got him another t-shirt that he’ll never fit into. Well, at least this one is a Japanese XL instead of an L.

I am still obsessed with all the bicycling Uber Eats drivers.

And I met my old co-worker, Suzuki-san, for dinner. We had steak again and I really need to plan my weight-loss diet soon.

I started out the day with a return to Hoshino coffee and the crabby girl was there. At least she was wearing a mask so I couldn’t see her crabby face.

I went to the Miraikan today, The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. It was the worst science museum I’ve ever been to. Lots of loosey goosey “change the way people think” crap. The Asimo was a good example. I finally had the chance to see the walking robot from Honda, and it came running out of the closet. But then it just walked around slowly waving its arms while a narrator talked a lot of nonsense. It kicked a soccer ball and moved sideways but mostly it was five to ten minutes of blah blah blah.

Another example is waiting in line to get into a pod. There were five pods each showing a different movie about iPS. I say movie but it might as well have been a Powerpoint presentation because it was just POV comic slides of a very weak story. Ten wasted minutes. Then you went back to see the actual “science-y stuff” and it was pretty watered down.

At least they had some space stuff and a picture of my classmate Bobby Satcher. Or should I say Dr. Robert Satcher, MD-PhD, astronaut.

I was near the giant Gundam and so I finally went to go see it. It was pretty impressive. I guess I really wasn’t expecting anything after that museum so the Gundam was especially cool.

I ate lunch at the food court. It was food court food.

I got back to Shinjuku and decided to get some cake or something. The places I went to were either full or out of cake. I finally went back to Hoshino Coffee and stood in line. Then I waited 20 minutes for a Mont Blanc soufflé which was actual quite tasty. My order was taken by Miss Crabby, of course.

And I just kind of hung around until dinnertime. I went to the Tokyo Katsukura (I went to the Osaka one last week) and the prices are much higher. But they told me the rest of the chain uses mostly Canadian pork and the Tokyo branch only uses Japanese pork. It’s really quite good and I got more pork than I should’ve (200g).

After that I went and bought some more underwear at Muji (trying to avoid doing laundry as much) but we’ll see if that works out.

It was a rainy day and I used most of the day to rest. I had some errands to run but first, Hoshino Coffee. The server was the crabbiest person I’ve met in Japan and she seemed to dislike foreigners. She needs a new job because most of the people in there were foreigners.

I sent off a Suica card to a friend’s daughter who is coming to Tokyo. I spent ¥1000 on the card, ¥1800 on protective shields so it couldn’t be read while in transit, and ¥2000 on express postage. Hahaha. Well, I’m just hoping it makes her life easier when she gets here. I also mailed off my application to get the certificate that says I went to the four corners of Japan.

After all that it was only noon! I went to Odakyu Department store’s restaurant floor for lunch and while the fish wasn’t as fresh as yesterday, it was plenty fresh and tasty as well.

After that it was nap time, and Netflix time, until I went to the Watering Hole for dinner.

I had several more beers and forgot to take a picture of my burger because, well, I had several more beers. I met a guy from Montana who worked for Alaska Airlines and got here for cheap, a guy from San Francisco who comes quite often, and a guy from Iowa who married a woman from China and is going to live there for a year. Always a good time there.

Oh, and I went to Muji right before they closed to buy some pajamas since I think the sale was ending today. I still have to try them on to see if they fit.

I made it to the “easternmost point” of Japan! Had to get up at 5am to make it to the airport early and ran into some snags. I guess you need to sign up for bus tickets in advance because when I got there at 6, all the buses (every 10 minutes) were full for another hour! So I took the train, which was another mess. They better get this sorted out before the Olympics.

JAL was another mess. I didn’t have any direct confirmation from the airline because I bought my ticket through a third-party. ANA just had me stick my passport in the machine and I was expecting something similar. JAL needs either a QR code or a JAL-branded card. Yeesh. Took them a while but they looked me up and got me on my way. Good thing I was at the airport early.

I knew it would be a bit of a drive, but I couldn’t figure out the navigation system or the Bluetooth connection on the way out. Also much colder up north but a nice clear day and a lot of roads that looked like this. More than three hours of this.

But I made it!

I guess this is the real easternmost point. The other picture is of the monument that says it’s the easternmost point.

And a picture from above. Several of those building appear to be museums talking about how they want their islands back from the Russians, and I didn’t understand why until I got up into the tower. There’s a speck in the middle left that’s a Japan Coast Guard patrol boat and a speck in the middle right that’s Signaly rock which is Russian territory. With the naked eye it looks like it’s less than a mile away. You can see large islands farther out that are also Russian territory.

It’s pretty, and kind of remote.

Lots of memorials and I’m not sure what they’re all for, besides wanting the islands back.

There’s a viewing tower where you can get a better view of the islands, and where I took the aerial photos from.

This is from the easternmost point.

I went to the local ramen restaurant and asked what they recommended and it was the 2-color donburi. Incredibly resh salmon roe and crab!

After that I finally figured out the car Bluetooth and the hidden button to get the map to take another destination. Not really hidden, but Toyota’s UIs are awful. The GPS told me it would take five hours to get back to the airport and I followed the speed of traffic (i.e. passing cars doing the speed limit).

I got back to Kushiro with plenty of time to spare but it was dark at 5pm and I when I rented the car I was told to watch out for deer. I just went into town to find a restroom (thank goodness for convenience stores) and they told me which road to take. I found a gas station about a mile from a Mister Donut so I got gas and ate dinner where I knew I could. Clams at a Mister Donut seemed iffy, but I feel fine.

The Kushiro airport isn’t as tiny as I had expected and had several restaurants. I wish I would’ve looked beforehand. I had a long wait for my plane, which was late, and got on the first bus back to the hotel. The speed limit was 60 and the bus was doing 90, so I now I don’t feel so bad about my speeding in Hokkaido. I got back about 11pm. A long day, just so I could get to the easternmost point. Maybe I need better hobbies.

I just watched the rugby semifinal with South Africa winning a close game over Wales. And now I have to go to bed early or at least just get up early for my trip to Hokkaido tomorrow!

I got an early start, which was a mistake. No salaryman parade on Sunday, but Hoshino Coffee doesn’t open until 9am now! I should’ve checked yesterday. I ended up at the Excelsior Cafe, which wasn’t bad except for the Aussie on his cell phone.

I decided to head to Akihabara today for my yearly pilgrimage to what’s left of the old Denden town. On the way I remembered I still had to buy a Suica card for my sister’s friend’s daughter who is meeting us on this trip later. I had to go to Tokyo Station only because I’d already left Shinjuku station. Man Tokyo Station is confusing now. Stood in line with a Kiwi who’s lived in Hong Kong for the past seven years and a very hungover old Englishman or something, who was pretty right-wing about everything and was kind of being a bummer. It was still better than being at work.

When I got through the line I got the Suica card and also remembered I was going to take the Yamagata Shinkansen so I could say I was on it. The seven minutes from Tokyo to Ueno is only ¥1140. And they let me keep the ticket.

It’s a “mini-Shinkansen” and is paired with another Shinkansen until it splits off onto the Yamagata route.

Then I walked to Akihabara. It’s not really that far and at one point I found they’d converted the space underneath the JR tracks into a bunch of art boutiques. And I finally went into the grocery store-looking “Cha Bara” (it has a lot of food-related stores inside) and ate at the Nagasaki Toruko Rice Cafe. It was a lot of very tasty food. Their frying game is on point.

We were joined by a mushroom mascot character as well.

I was going to check out the musical instrument stores (and not buy anything) and go to Kanda Shrine on the way back, but at some point I really had to use the bathroom. I ended up in a cramped little public restroom in a park that was also surprisingly clean. No soap though, so I headed back to the hotel room early. I watched some Netflix, got some dinner at Mos Burger (I wasn’t very hungry after that big fried lunch), and came back and watched the rugby game. Pretty good for a do-nothing day.