Monday

Again, we get up at 9:00 to make sure we can check out on time. I packed up the night before so we wouldn’t have to do it in a hurry in the morning. So we leave no problem. In Japan, all you have to do to check out is leave your key at the desk and you are done. Since most people just pay with cash when they check in, it’s not a big deal to just check out.

So we head over to the train station to wait for our train at 11:50. We decide to go ahead and eat at a restaurant so we aren’t so hungry on our trip back. We will be on the trains until 4:01 and Okayama has crappy food so we wanted to make sure that we got fed earlier. So we find this restaurant that has these nice plastic models of food and it looks yummy. So we go in.

First, they take forever to seat us. It’s like they panicked as soon as they saw us. We are foreign and they just assume we can’t speak any Japanese. It’s a reasonable thought in Osaka where lots of foreign tourists come and go. However, it was very inconvenient. So then we get sat. No one gives us a menu for about 5 minutes. That sucks. But what sucks worse is a waitress brings the menu and then stands and waits while we choose are meal. This sucks because she kept looking nervous like she was going to have to explain the menu in English, despite our assurances that we could speak Japanese, AND we had to choose from 3 equally crappy breakfasts. See, it was only 10:00 and they were just serving breakfast. They moved the breakfast models out front in an odd spot so we missed it when we came in. We should have just left when we saw the crappy menu, but we tried to stick it out. We choose the ‘Toast meal’ for each of us. The menu mentioned toast, a salad, and what we thought was a fried egg. That sounds yummy enough, right?

So we wait, and of course, being a stupid Japanese restaurant, people were smoking all around us. The restaurant was really gross with the smell of smoke. So we waited for about 5 minutes and they bring us a coke each and a plate. On the plate is the biggest pieces of toast I have ever seen. I mean, bigger than Texas toast and only really toasted on one side (yay for stupid toast ovens). There is also a small crappy looking salad. And a boiled egg still in the shell. So we had to crack the eggs ourselves on a tiny little plate and try not to get eggshell everywhere. It was really dumb. The eggs wouldn’t peel at all. Either than thin membrane would be left and only the outer shell peeled off OR the whole white pulled away with the shell leaving only yolk. Chris gave up on his stupid egg. I persevered and ate my egg. I gave Chris my toast though because it wasn’t very good.

We ended up throwing away most of our ‘breakfast’ because it was such a crappy meal. Good thing it was only $5 per person. That started our day off on a REALLY sour note. It’s unfortunate too because the day only continued to go down hill. We did end up buying some bento (boxed lunches) before we got on the train, so at least we had some sort of a meal.

So we get on the shinkansen, and because it’s really a wonderful train, nothing crappy happened to us while we were traveling. We were just SO READY to get home that I unwisely sighed and said, “At least nothing else can go wrong since we have made it to the trains!” Chris winced and said I jinxed it. But jinxes aren’t real, right?

I don’t know, but remember…there was Typhoon that hit Shimane the day before and was still chilling out in the area Monday morning. Typhoon = lots of rain and wind. Lots of wind = trains being delayed because you don’t want to trains to blow over and derail (and they really do, one got blown right off the tracks in Kyushu on Sunday so everyone was being cautious). Of course, our train was not delayed, but completely cancelled. We were only supposed to have a 10 minute wait for the train and then we had reserve seats for the entire ride home. It was to be grand and easy and fun. But noooo…our train was cancelled. We had to wait an extra hour for the next try and then fight for unreserved seats because the only reservable seats that were left were in the smoking cars. Because the trains were cancelled, our train was super crowded. Gah! Waiting the extra hour for the train just sucked, too. We were already so upset from breakfast and the whole crappy weekend that this was just the icing on the cake. The train also took longer than normal because it had to move slowly through some areas and it stopped in many extra stations to let off the extra people. I think we got home around 5:30. And before you roll your eyes, after so much waiting, that hour and a half was a big different; we had been waiting since 10:00 to get home! I was so TIRED by the time we got home. Just weary I guess.

I just wanted to cry. I was expecting such a lovely weekend and it was such a crappy trip. Everything went wrong! Now, every mistake and flub was completely fixable. We did get hotel rooms for the entire weekend (even though we paid about $100 extra for the rooms from what it was originally going to be!). Chris took his test and spanked it. The train was cancelled but there was one that came an hour later AND our seats were (obviously) comped. I did get to see the floating gardens. I got to see the castle. It wasn’t a disaster. It was just a crappy trip. And I’m sorry I have done nothing but complain about it, but it was really bad. I don’t even want to pretend it was a good trip. I did have some good times with Chris and seeing things, but overall, I give it a big thumbs down (but not two thumbs down, just one, but it’s a biggen’).

After we got home, we did go out to the Okonomiyaki place. Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki is my favorite Japanese food. It was really good and the owner likes us so he gave us free juice with the Okonomiyaki. Also, we got to see a tiny Japanese boy (he was 2 or 3 years old) run head first into a wall, twice. It sounds horrible, but it was REALLY funny. He was just really excited and/or bored. How can that NOT make your day? I hope you had a better weekend.

Happy belated birthday, Mom!