This was mostly a day of travel. Woke up at 6:10am, and since Kevin doesn’t leave his heater on, the room was easily cold enough to see my breath. This is one Japanese custom I can do without. Call me “conventional”, but I happen to like a warm house.

I grabbed a bus from Togi, back to Kanazawa at 6:50am, then waited an hour for my train to Osaka. During this time, I called my mom to put in a status update, then gave Nami a call (I was really feeling guilty about not sending a postcard like I promised to – My reasoning was that I would probably get back before the postcard did). I suppose I should’ve asked Nami if it was OK to call her sister when I hit Yokohama, however I figured that if Yumi-san was anything like her younger sister, she would enjoy a call from one of her sister’s students. During the train trip to Osaka, I met some rather cute highschool girls, on their way to a friend’s place in Osaka. I chatted with one of the girls (Yuki Mikado), for the entire trip. Yuki said that she was going to a private school to become a hospital nurse. At one point, she mentioned that she was single – a shame that I didn’t live in Japan – she was 18, and didn’t seem to care at all that I was a few years older than her. We parted ways in Shin-Osaka, and I grabbed the Shinkansen to Hakata, then from Hakata, a normal train to Nagasaki.

At this point, I made the only true “mistake” on my part, and I can only attribute it to not paying attention. I got off one stop early on the train. No big deal, I just waited for the next train, and 5 minutes later, was in Nagasaki. Quickly went to the hostel, checked in, showered, then spent around a half-hour playing with the remote-control for the heater/air-conditioner before going to sleep. There were a lot of Germans in Nagasaki for some reason. A few guys in my room were German (they were very nice, and loved to chat about travel adventures!).