The day before yesterday, we went to a-nation; the annual pop festival with avex artists. The festival on the 17th was held in Nagoy, and since we're in Hakata, it meant an early train.
You see, the festival really starts at 15:00, but opens its doors at 13:00 with some support acts and other festivities, so you'd rather be early in order to experience it all.
I'm not really one for support acts, but sometimes, the support acts turn out to be a diamond in the rough, so hey; why not. We would take Hikari 444 to Shin Osaka at 7:04 and all should sail smoothly, right?
Well, I turned out to be a tad wrong.
For starters; I ran a bit late, but still plenty of time to catch my train by going on foot to the station. That is, if it wouldn't rain cats, dogs, rats and a plethora of other mammals that morning.
I'm talking a Five Second Rain here; not the type that rains for only five seconds, but the type that will get you soaking wet in 5 seconds if you step into it.
So I gathered some energy and made a run for the subway, only to miss the 6:46 train by a few seconds. Drat.
The next subway train leaves at 6:59, arriving at Hakata Staton at 7:01; which gives me about 2.5 minutes to make a dash for the Shinkansen upon arrival at Hakata Station (the hotel is fortunately only one stop away). Willem text'd me to inform me that they were in the 444 with Niels (yeah, that's useful info, uh-huh), but failed to inform me of Niels not carrying his 'phone, who I text'd earlier (well, apparently in vain) to inform him that I'd probably miss the 7:04 train.
Unfortunately, I was delayed for a few seconds due to some problems at the gate, and so the Hikari's doors closed right in front of my nose and I had officially missed my train.
After some words which shall not be repeated, I got on the 7:39 train to Shin Osaka, effectively 35 minutes behind the rest of the group.
At that moment, Matijs text'd me. "I'm late and in the 7:12 train; do you know the address of the hotel?"
7:12? There is no a Hikari at 7:12... A quick glance at the timetable of the Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen in my wallet (handy little booklet) confirmed my suspicion; Matijs had boarded a Nozomi train; a
series 500 no less.
Train-geek mode ON.
The Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen has three types and various series of bullet trains; the Kodama-type (cheapest, stops at all stations), the Hikari-type (more expensive, stops at less stations compared to the Kodama) and the Nozomi (most expensive, only stops at the most important stations). The 500 series is the most expensive and luxurious train of its time at five billion yen a piece, looking the part by imitating a sleek silver needle.The Japan Rail Pass that we carry is not valid on the Nozomi trains due to a price difference which in my opinion does not make up for the 30 minutes or so that you win on a distance of about 800km.
Right, here's hoping that Matijs is not visited by a conductor, or if he is, just plays the "dumb tourist"-act. Later I heard that everything went swimmingly and indeed, he arrived nine minutes ahead of the 7:04-group.
I, on the other hand, still had 36 minutes until I would arrive in Nagoya at 11:32.
Due to some miscommunications on both sides and a bit of a hurry by the others, they went ahead and headed for the festival, while I was searching for the hotel to seen whether I could check-in or at least leave my stuff there.
To make matters worse, the ward the hotel was in was kind of large and the map I got at the tourist office didn't mention blocks, so finding the first block of the ward proved to be rather difficult.
To make a long story short; I arrived at the hotel around 13:30, after walking around for some two hours.
I like to know where the hotel is and how to get there and away, as I usually don't want to have to rely on taxi's, no matter how cheap they turn out to be.
I returned to the station to catch the train to the festival area after concluding that the hotel would not check me in before 15:00, and I made it to the festival just in time to see the first regular artist perform.
Lots of golden oldies next to the new songs this time, including a really old song: Shocking Blue's Venus, sung by Koda Kumi. The festival started to get interesting with Ai Otsuka's performance and I really enjoyed Every Little Thing.
In fact, I enjoyed them so much that I intend to visit a regular concert of them at some time.
After the final act stopped around 20:50 (Koda Kumi, who also sang the Cutie Honey opening together with TRF), it was time to head back to Nagoya, pick up my bag and walk to the hotel, where I arrived just after 23:00.
After a short night, I got on the first train back to Hakata, where I would meet with Robert and hop on to Relay Tsubame taking us to Kagoshima so we could take a bath at Furusato Onsen.
When we arrived there, it was kind of getting late, and when it also turned out that the bath was full and we had to wait for an hour, we decided to head back, thus making this visit one of the shortest visits to Sakurajima by us.
The next day, Niels, Robert and I went to another piece of Dutch Heritage in Japan: Hirado.
A small (really small) castle sits on top of a hill, looking out over the port of Hirado. We also saw various monuments commemorating the Dutch delegation, and a few Dutch sailors are buried there. In 2000, our crown prince visited the site, leaving a plaque and a model of a Dutch warehouse; a project intended to rebuild the warehouse that stood there over 400 years ago. Unfortunately, there must be some lack of funding, as the warehouse is still nowhere to be seen and the model has seen brighter days.
All in all a very intersting day. The only drawback is that from Hakata, it takes you a few hours to get there.
Tomorrow, a large part of our group heads for Korea; I will go and explore Hakata a bit.
Cheers, K.