Wednesday 29th October<\/p>\n
More walking.<\/p>\n
This morning I had to check out a bit early, so I quickly gathered my stuff and walked to the basutei (bus stop) . Having ridden with the basu (bus) before, this time I confidently got on board, waited for arrival at Hiroshima eki (station), paid for the fare (while apparently somewhat amazing the driver) and got off. Off to the Shinkansen! Booyah!
\n<\/p>\n
I quickly located the platform I needed to be at, except that the next Shinkansen (this particular type, yes there are 6 types) was not covered by the JR pass, so I couldn’t take that one. Half an hour later a proper one arrived. I was glad to have my eReader with me. xD<\/p>\n
After getting on board, I was surprised to meet my fellow gaijin Stefano. Quelle surprise. He was headed for T\u014dky\u014d and took the same train as I. Only I would get off sooner, in Himeji. A short talk later, it was time to say goodbye again.<\/p>\n
After arriving at Himeji eki, I took a moment to eat some lunch (I love that prepackaged sushi) before I would go to the hotel. The hoteru (hotel) was situated about 1 km from the eki, the weather was nice, so I decided to just walk there.<\/p>\n
Check in would only be possible from 15h, but I managed to leave my luggage, while I would scout the city. I would be back after 15h to do the final check in. The hoteru employee happily obliged.<\/p>\n
And so I went out again, this time with only a light backpack. I quickly located what must me the nightlife area, which now was pretty devoid of life, what with it being a bright and shiny afternoon. You need night-time for a nightlife area to be alive. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
So moving along I headed for the (practically) one and only attraction of the town: Himeji-j\u014d (Himeji castle). Yes, pictures will follow. But time was nearing 15h already and I wanted to check in quickly, so as to be sure to have my stuff safely in my room. Thus, I headed back to the hoteru, before reaching the j\u014d. I decided to either go later in the evening or possibly in the next morning.<\/p>\n
When arriving at the hoteru, I quickly checked in and went to my room.<\/p>\n
Fun fact 1: in fact my luggage had already been brought to my room. Classy!<\/p>\n
Fun fact 2: when checking in, I was asked to provide address data of both myself and the company I work for. (Yes, in Japan you are actually defined by your job. I’m so happy I could live this stereotype. xD)<\/p>\n
Not so fun fact: the room smells of cigarettes… Not overwhelmingly, but still. And there are burn spots in several places. Charming.<\/p>\n
Once I had arrived in my room, I sat down, took a break and turned on the TV. Before long it was dinner time, so I went out to find a restaurant in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Remarkable: I was required to hand in the key to my room before leaving the hoteru.<\/p>\n
Quicky I found a restaurant and ordered something that looked pretty in a picture on the menu. I have no idea of what it was called, but I had some kind of noodle soup, possibly some pho. Totemo oishii deshita\u00a0(it was very tasty)!<\/p>\n
And after that, the walk was on again. I took a long walk through the city and visited Himeji-j\u014d. The area surrounding the j\u014d was (still) open and with it being around 20:00h it was also nice and quiet. I think I’ve gotten some great pictures. (yes, yes, them too will follow)<\/p>\n
After having seen enough of the area, I decided to take a detour back to the hoteru. I walked past the former outer walls of the defensive structures of the j\u014d and ended in the middle of nowhere (see my previous post).<\/p>\n
When I got near to the hoteru, I entered the nightlife area again. This time it was just full of life as lots of folks were walking around and.. well, just walking around, as far as I could tell. At one point someone asked to me something, but I did not manage to decipher what that might have been. Oh well…<\/p>\n
Back at the hoteru I took a nice bath and watched some more TV. In the news there was an item about the Dutch Royals visiting Japan. Totemo omoshiroi desu (very interesting). I think.. I didn’t understand much of it. xD<\/p>\n
Having visited Himeji-j\u014d already, I think tomorrow I’ll quickly depart for \u014csaka.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wednesday 29th October More walking. This morning I had to check out a bit early, so I quickly gathered my stuff and walked to the basutei (bus stop) . Having ridden with the basu (bus) before, this time I confidently got on board, waited for arrival at Hiroshima eki (station),<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-japan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/himeji.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1135,"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/1135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iplumbing.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}