Nagoya - 22nd March 2012 (James)

Thanks to the rapidly falling snow, the bus ride back to Minakami seemed a bit precarious, thankfully the driver attacked it with typical Japanese skill and patience and soon had us in the “heated” waiting room at the train station. We decided to utilise the couple of days between the onsen and our friends’ arrival in Japan to catch up with our Japanese “families.” First on the list was Tomoko, who now lives in Nagoya and a couple of shinkansen rides later we were navigating Nagoya’s subway line and checking into our hotel. Tomoko lived with Heidi’s family in Bundaberg when she went on exchange to Australia during high school. On our visit to Japan in 2008 we stayed with Tomoko’s mum Kazuko the couple of times we were in Tokyo. That wasn’t an option this trip as Kazuko was visiting Tomoko in Nagoya! Seemed like the perfect time for a visit.

Tomoko soon joined us at our hotel and we ventured out to a nearby department store for dinner. We settled on a miso pork restaurant “Yaba Flying” (which I’ve affectionately tagged as the “dancing pig”) and I tucked into a delicious tonkatsu (pork cutlet) while the girls talked away.

The next morning we caught the subway over to Tomoko’s apartment and met with Kazuko and Tomoko’s young son Hiroki. Tomoko works for JR (when she isn’t on maternity leave for 3 years!) and decided to take us all to the Shinkansen Museum for the day. I found it a very enjoyable and informative visit – they have preserved a variety of Shinkansens and explain the design evolution from the 1970s to todays speed record holders.

They also explained quite a lot of the history of railway engineering and the future of high speed rail in Japan – MAGLEV. Our entry tickets won us two tickets in a lottery to operate a train driving simulator that saw me trying to drive a train with Japanese instructions. Don’t think I did too bad – the 56% percentile is pretty good for a gaijin right? Heidi gave her ticket away to a teenage girl who had missed out – you should have seen her excitement! She followed us around for a couple of hours thanking us!

We made our way back to Tomoko’s and Kazuko whipped us up a quick feed of okonomiyaki (cabbage pancakes) before Tomoko rushed us back to the station to catch our shinkansen back to Tokyo. Our other Japanese family took over duties then. Heidi stayed with the Suzuki’s when she lived in Japan and we had a lovely time with them in 2008. Host-sister Maya met us at Tokyo station and we boarded the subway for the trip to her apartment. We met her husband Taro there and after a quick bath and a night cap we were fast asleep.