Snow, Trains and Automobiles
Yesterday evening our new car arrived. The Nissan La Festa. You can read more about the model here. Apart from Singapore, where it's an import, I don't think the La Festa is available outside of Japan. Our friend, and Yukiko's work colleague, Kazu, got us a very good deal on the car through his friend Nishimura-san who is a Nissan salesperson in Saitama (near Tokyo). We basically got the maximum discount possible. Too keep the price low, Nishimura-san delivered the car to us himself. So he had to spend an entire day driving it down on a trailor from Saitama. As a special thank you to him and our friend Kazu we took them both out for a nice dinner at a local izakaya. I was going to drive them but it was very dark and raining out so we decided to postpone my first 'driving in Japan' experience. Taking a taxi also allowed me to have a few drinks.
This morning we woke up to snow everywhere. A few cm on the ground and more falling. I wasn't going to even try to drive in the snow so I spent the day going over the car's Navi manual. A Navi is a navigational computer that should hopefully enable me to drive somewhere and actually arrive. It's also got a built in DVD/CD and i-Pod style music player. That should be fun, once I figure it all out.
Tomorrow is a holiday so I have weddings in Tokushima on both Friday and Saturday. Luckily I booked Sunday, Christmas, off because there is supposed to be 1 bridal fair wedding that day. I'd hate to waste all of Christmas day on a model wedding. Because of all the snow I got a phone call from my wedding office this afternoon asking if I could leave this evening instead of tomorrow. They said that Tokushima has lots of snow and they are afraid they buses won't be able to cross all the bridges and get there tomorrow morning. So I agreed and headed out at 6 pm. Of course once I got to Sannomiya to buy a bus ticket I learned that all the buses for Tokushima had been cancelled, all day long. Now why hadn't my office checked on this and informed me? So I phoned my office and left a message asking what I should do, then I went to grab a bite to eat. No one returned my call so obviously the office was closed for the night. I knew that it's possible to get to Tokushima by train, by a very roundabout route, but it is possible. It was kind of late by this time though so I didn't know if I'd still be able to make it. So I took the subway up to the bullet train station, Shin-Kobe. The woman at the ticket counter told me I would be able to make it tonight so I bought the ticket. It was going to take 3 1/2 hours and 3 trains from here. But when I got up on the platform I noticed that all the shinkansens were running 40 mins late. If I waited for my train there would be no way to catch my connections. I rushed back down to the ticket gate and asked if I could just jump on the first train to come along, even though I had a ticket for a different train. They said sure, but I would have to go in the un-reserved cars instead of using a reserved seat that I had paid for. And, of course, everyone had the same idea as me and the unreserved cars were standing room only. Luckily this first jaunt was only 40 minutes or so and I managed to catch all my connections. Now I'm in Tokushima and can get a good night's rest for my work tomorrow.
This morning we woke up to snow everywhere. A few cm on the ground and more falling. I wasn't going to even try to drive in the snow so I spent the day going over the car's Navi manual. A Navi is a navigational computer that should hopefully enable me to drive somewhere and actually arrive. It's also got a built in DVD/CD and i-Pod style music player. That should be fun, once I figure it all out.
Tomorrow is a holiday so I have weddings in Tokushima on both Friday and Saturday. Luckily I booked Sunday, Christmas, off because there is supposed to be 1 bridal fair wedding that day. I'd hate to waste all of Christmas day on a model wedding. Because of all the snow I got a phone call from my wedding office this afternoon asking if I could leave this evening instead of tomorrow. They said that Tokushima has lots of snow and they are afraid they buses won't be able to cross all the bridges and get there tomorrow morning. So I agreed and headed out at 6 pm. Of course once I got to Sannomiya to buy a bus ticket I learned that all the buses for Tokushima had been cancelled, all day long. Now why hadn't my office checked on this and informed me? So I phoned my office and left a message asking what I should do, then I went to grab a bite to eat. No one returned my call so obviously the office was closed for the night. I knew that it's possible to get to Tokushima by train, by a very roundabout route, but it is possible. It was kind of late by this time though so I didn't know if I'd still be able to make it. So I took the subway up to the bullet train station, Shin-Kobe. The woman at the ticket counter told me I would be able to make it tonight so I bought the ticket. It was going to take 3 1/2 hours and 3 trains from here. But when I got up on the platform I noticed that all the shinkansens were running 40 mins late. If I waited for my train there would be no way to catch my connections. I rushed back down to the ticket gate and asked if I could just jump on the first train to come along, even though I had a ticket for a different train. They said sure, but I would have to go in the un-reserved cars instead of using a reserved seat that I had paid for. And, of course, everyone had the same idea as me and the unreserved cars were standing room only. Luckily this first jaunt was only 40 minutes or so and I managed to catch all my connections. Now I'm in Tokushima and can get a good night's rest for my work tomorrow.
posted by Jason at 11:58 PM
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