“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…”
So here’s my 28 hours in transit.
12:12, Dec 15th: Random Tom Waits quote of the day: “Well I’m at the station, and I can’t get on the train.”
I hate airport security, it gives me the willies every time. There I am, just stepping off the train to Terminal 2, [...]

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Photos from Kagoshima really are up now. No, really.

When I left you, I was… about to board a plane. Had a slight spot of bother with the electric razor in my baggage (anyone quoting Fight Club will be shot) but I sorted it out and bordered the 767 at 13:50ish. The flight took about an [...]

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Various times, December 7th.
13:18: But then, this is what it’s all about, no? I checked out of my hotel, went out, realised I’d forgotten my camera, went back to get it, and went out again.
Checked my bank account, which revealed that I currently have -10,000 yen. Or possibly it means 10,000 yen, but either [...]

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(Had I plenty of time and if I could stand writing <wpg2> over and over again, I’d go through and insert photos, but I don’t and I can’t. You’re lucky you’re getting any photos at all, you know. So click here for my photos from the last couple of days. I’m sure you can work [...]

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So I’m here at Matsuyama’s ferry port and as usual, thanks to poorly planned transportation, I have time to kill.
The problem is that I aim to be in Yamaguchi by 18:30. It’s currently 12:30, so I’ve got six hours, right? The ferry takes 2 1/2 hours, the tram to Hiroshima station takes 30 minutes, the [...]

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So I took yet another tram to the Port of Hiroshima. Had to wait an hour before I could even get my ticket, but I was on the boat for Matsuyama by 11:15. The trip across the Seto Inland Sea to the island of Shikoku, fourth largest in Japan, took 2 1/2 hours. A bus [...]

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(And now, to confuse you, the Prologue!
I’ve written this over the past two nights so tense is going to be a tad confusing.
This, I believe, I wrote on the train on Tuesday.)

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I don’t know if there’s any wi-fi here so I’m on a public computer. At a charming hostel in Kyoto. The last two nights I’ve been staying in a capsule hotel seeing as I foolishly didn’t reserve any accommodation.
Took a 300 Series Shinkansen from Tokyo station. The shinkansen is pretty cool indeed. Very quite and [...]

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I’ve cobbled together a Rough Plan which includes a week in Kyoto and a week hopping from Osaka, to Hiroshima, to Fukuoka, to Nagasaki, to Kagoshima, and then getting a flight back from Fukuoka to Haneda, and one final day in Tokyo. Cost for accommodation and travel: ~120,000 yen. The Shinkansen is not cheap. I [...]

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Having problems uploading pics so can’t do a proper entry — oh wait, I ran out of disk space on the server.
That’s better.
So today I went to Hakone. The reasons for going are twofold, and equally nerdy.
1) There is an old PC game called Microsoft Train Simulator. You drive trains. One of them is the [...]

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