Kodama evenings, and close but no Fuji

Here we go again.

For those of you wondering why I'm waste my time writing, and your time reading, this blog check Bjorn's (The one not is Tokyo) explanation on his about page. I could not say it better myself, so why try.

Trains and planes. This time its trains. My home away from home lately is the bullet trains running along the east coast of Japan between Nagoya and Tokyo. The Tokai shinkansen has three types of trains:

The Nozomi super express - This is the Shinkansen bad boy. Why bother to stop at small redneck towns of only 700 000 people? No, lets go straight to Tokyo and make a couple of stops there instead. Indeed a very comfortable ride. Covers the 400 km between Nagoya and Tokyo in around 1 hour 40 minutes.

The Hikari super express - Stops at some of the stations. Which ones differ, so be careful with this one, kids. I've hopped on one of these under the belief that it would take me to Shin-Yokohama, and had to go to Shinagawa instead. Local trains back are not very time efficient...

The Kodama super express - How they can call this "super express" is hard to understand. But wikipedia tells us that every shinkansen is called super express. It is every bit as fast as it's siblings above, but has to stop at every single station, often standing there for five minutes while the Hikari and Nozomi blows past at 270 km/h. Depending on where you are going, sometimes you have to degrade yourself and take one of these. Going to Tokyo will add one hour to your trip compared to the Nozomi, and the price is the same. The good point is that you get the chance to see the Nozomi zoom past the platform you are at. Very impressive. The sound, the wind, the fact that 15 cars just went past you in under a second.

Most of the time the Shinkansen is filled with salari-men, or business people in plain English. In the morning they sleep, during the day they tend to either sleep or use their laptop, and in the evenings they drink beer and sleep. Becoming more and more of one myself (not voluntarily), I've been starting to pick up on this pattern. The beer is a bit too expensive though.

Was in Shin-Fuji the other day. "On the foothills of Mt. Fuji", as the website of the company I was visiting put it. "Sweet, then I'll get to see good old Fuji-san up close for the first time" - was my initial reaction. Somehow the damn mountain managed to hide though.

Also got a bit of the Japan that most temporary visitors never sees or even hear of. Went out eating with one of our salesmen and a Japanese guy from our US office. After dinner we ended up at one of the many "mama-san" places in Nishiki. Mama-san bars are where the above mentioned salari-men go, and the main reason to why they are sleeping on the morning Hikaris. There are many variants to them, but they are more innocent than the Hostess bars that has a bit more of adult content. These in turn seem to be arranged in a "level" system, and I'm sure you can figure out how these levels are measured. Fascinating stuff, this. Ok, back to the one we went to this time. Mama-san at this place had a thing for eighties rock, so they had a KISS DVD rolling on a screen. The other girl working there was going to NY to study, and then there was this florist that I could not figure out if she was working there or was just friends with Mama-san. But she probably was working. Of course after a while the karaoke set was brought out, and I had to deliver a couple of songs. Since it was all company paid, it was a good time. Still don't know how much three hours at these places are though, will get back to you on that.

Man, it feels like I'm being pulled deeper and deeper into this salari-man existence. Scary.

What's next? Stay tuned...

Of course I got the "Oh, you are really good at Japanese", which usually means that your Japanese is really crappy. If you don't get a comment when speaking Japanese you know that you are on the right track. Been starting to get less and less "Oh, very good" lately, which is nice. Now if people only could stop complementing me for using chop-sticks... "Oh, you CAN use chop-sticks! - Yes, and I'm sure that you know how to use a fork". It's the curse of being non -Asian in Japan. Could have been worse though...