Japan: Day 16 continued (October 6, 2008 Monday)

Monday continued:

We've taken three bullet trains to get us from Sapporo (the Northern most island of Japan) back to Sendai on Honshu (the main island). One of the train connections was very dicey. We knew we had 4 minutes to make the connection but the person who made our reservations said we had nothing to worry about because the next train would be across the same platform.

Well....
The usually punctual train we were on coming from Hakodate was 2 minutes late and we were at the back of the train with 3 pieces of heavy luggage and 1 computer case. But we did it! We made that connecting train to Hachinohe with only a few seconds to spare with it moving before we even found our seats. If we had missed it, we would have had problems with the arrangements our friend, Osamu san had made for us to send 2 of our bags to Tokyo from our Sendai hotel at 7:00 PM.

And speaking of sending bags around the country... This is the most incredible service. You can hire this country-wide service called Takkyubin to send your parcels and in our case heavy luggage across the country super cheap. Sending two of our heavy suitcases from Sendai to Tokyo cost less than $20.00 a piece!!! (They're also going to store our suitcases for a week until we pick them up at Narita airport!!!) We've consolidated our essentials for the rest of our journey into two remaining suitcases.

Anyway, again things worked out! We made the connecting train and although it was forecasted for 90% rainstorms for Sendai the rain had stopped so we were able to stay dry to walk to our Comfort Hotel easily.


My aunt and cousin, Masako joined us there to walk us to a nearby restaurant and enjoy a fabulous meal. And still it did not rain.

I told my mom that if the weather should go bad for the remainder of the trip, we will have enjoyed two thirds and that is much to be grateful for. I told her that truly, her mom and dad have been watching over us to make sure her journey is safe and wonderful.