Day 60 - I jibbed it.

I got the subway home at half 5 this morning, therefore failed to get my train to Hiroshima at about 9 as planned, so I'm now sitting in the flat, packed, working up the energy to leave and get the train. I think I'll probably end up going with Les to Namba in a couple of hours, then getting another Shinkansen (Yay!) to Hiroshima. I won't get there until very late indeed now, so tomorrow will have to be very active indeed. Also, I have bought myself a cheese Okonomiyaki, which is delicious and cheap, wish I'd discovered them before.

We went to the post office earlier to send a load of Les's stuff to Bill in Korea, and on the way a small boy on a bike in a Judo outfit stopped and asked us a question, but unfortunately we had no idea what he was saying. I responded with "Sumimasen, watashi no nihon-go dess". This was meant to be "Sumimasen, watashi no nihon-go wa heta na no de" meaning "Sorry, my Japanese isn't very good". What I said roughly translates as "Excuse me, I am the Japanese language", which quite apart from being nonsense, doesn't even convey what I meant. In the post office we were informed that the parcel could take 6 weeks, as the government would have to open it up and check it. This was baffling, until the very helpful lady who was translating for us said Kita Korea, meaning north - if we hadn't picked up on this and shouted "Minami! Minami Korea!", Les's parcel would have ended up in entirely the wrong country.

Also, despite us having to leave here in an hour, and her not being packed, Les just went for a shower and is now sitting next to me eating the rest of my Okonomiyaki, seemingly unperturbed by any of this. Curious...

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Les got all packed in time, she got all her stuff packed into three bags, the two to be ckecked in weighed about 29 kg total - her limit is 20 kg, so she said she'll have to do some pleading. Also, her flight tob Glasgow only allows 1 bag, so she should really have posted twice as much stuff to Korea. This would have been an extrememly unhelpful thing to point out though, so I kept my mouth shut. I have made it to Hiroshima, I got in about 12 hours later than I intended. Hostel seems nice, everyone's a bit silent though, which is odd... I'm off to bed so I can get an early start tomorrow, although the BBC forecasts "heavy rain", which is a bit of a bugger. I may have to stay for an extra day anyway, so I can go to Miyajima when it's dry. This keyboard is the filthiest I have ever seen - all the keys have brown stuff round the edges and the gaps are full of hairs.