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The Castle TODO

Getting to Osaka I’ve said it before, but Shinkansen is the way to travel. No security checkpoints, boarding passes, airport pricing. Just hop through the turnstile, wait at the platform, find your seat, and then enjoy legroom while you drill hiragana so you can stop being so clueless about the local language. Or some other activity. Long trip through Tsuruga (敦賀市) from Nagano (長野) -> Osaka, but it gave me time to learn hiragana (平仮名)1! ...

Diamond Shiga ダイヤモンド志賀 We stepped off the bus onto the icy night streets of Shiga. This town has way more “I’m a ski town tourist trap” vibe already, even in the quiet. Below the stately facade of the hotel was a nigh-impassable icy ramp that used to be stairs. Slipped up those and dragged our snow gear suitcase up more stairs to the front desk. The hotel owner was able to properly communicate that the onsens would be off-limits to our tattoos, and check-in was easy. The old couple running the place seem to have owned it for a while, and are The smell was a bit troublesome. The cooks cleaned the restaurant flattop, and apparently didn’t have proper ventilation—reminiscent of the Matsushima Tourist Association Oyster Grill smell. ...

Goodbye to Sendai Packed, and then headed to the station in the morning. Still taken with the number of vending machines and the tidy, quiet feeling of a modern city in Japan in the winter. We spotted a vending machine re-stocker at some point—which is a mythological entity whose existence was disputed until recently. Thirty minutes of winding trail, trees visible through the fog. Before we came on this trip, I was thinking about American Gods (Neil Gaiman) and how we bring our deities to a new land with us. Who are the mountain gods in Zao? Do they care that we’re visiting? ...

Setting out It’s a 12 hour direct flight from DEN (Denver International) -> NRT (Tokyo Narita), which is both long and exhausting—but better than connecting I guess. Watched a bunch of movies on the flight, including Weapons (creepy, but cool) and also Bugonia (love Yorgos Lanthimos + Emma Stone). Upon landing, we considered shipping our roll-on suitcase ahead of us to Sendai, but when the clerk told us it might take an extra day or two due to snow-related delays, we opted to carry it with us. Got our Suica welcome IC cards, loaded with 5,000JPY each, and then hopped on the train into central Tokyo, Asakusa station. Looking out the window of the cramped train I spotted a “Fun Spot”-looking mall + amusement park, watched tiny vans and cars ride alongside the train, and tried to begin absorbing the language being broadcast to me in huge symbols of varying fonts. ...