Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Hiroshima

I checked out of my hotel at about 9:00 this morning and headed toward the train station. I presented my Japan Rail Pass and got a little train ticket thingie so I can travel unlimited distances on the trains and some busses. I just have to present the book thingie and they give me my train ticket and I go.

The ticket scanner is pretty nifty. It's like a little gate: you have to slide your ticket into a slot while you're walking through it, it goes in, scans it, and comes out the other end in about 1 second. And when you get to your destination, you slide it in the machine and it'll keep it and you keep walking. I'll get a video of it and a picture or two.

Well, I boarded the Shinkansen, aka The Bullet Train. Its max speed is a little over 180mph. That's pretty fast.

Here are some pictures that I took from the train:










This barbed wire looks nasty.


The food cart came around. I got some Pringles that tasted like the chicken noodle soup you get in a box. Wasn't the best, but I had the Coke with a smile! :)

Here's a batch of random pictures.




















At this point I had to potty. I went to the bathroom area and there was a bathroom on each side of the aisle. One said 'Western Style' and the other said 'Japanese Style'
Naturally I tried the Japanese Style one. Guess what? IT WAS A SQUATTER!!! Luckily I didn't have to poo...


About 4.5 hours later, we got to Hiroshima Terminal. I got outside and found the hotel right away. I got inside, checked into my room and here it is:








Awesome!


It even has a little tea making stand.

And it has a mini-fridge beneath the tea making stand. I had to run down to the 7-11 down the block to get some pop to put in it. :P
Yes, a 7-11. But I was pissed, they didn't have a slushie machine. Grr.
It wasn't themed like the Kwiki Mart like all of them in the US are. Bah!

I went to walk around some stores. I found a building that had a bunch of books and magazines on one floor. It was like a Borders/Barnes and Noble. The next floor was a Music/Movie store. I bought some new headphones there cause the piece of crap Sony headphones are pieces of crap. One of the ears went dead. Bah. Same exact thing that happened with my last pair (same model).

Then I went further upstairs and found a fun arcade. Lots of games. I played a couple point and shoot games. Bang Bang.
There were some other cool games kinda like DDR and Guitar Hero. With drums and stuff.
They even had a bunch of these enclosed spheres that were kinda like a virtual reality game. You could sit inside and control some sort of vehicle. I didn't play it as it was 500Yen. Or about $4.

That's about all I have for today.
I need to find some new sunglasses, too. These ones broke; the same way my last ones broke of the same model.

Maybe if something of mine breaks, I should get a different model of them :P

I'm gonna go watch these funny soaps on TV. There's even porn for like 300Yen. But don't worry, I'm not gonna watch it, I gotta save my Yen for the subways and stuff. Those aren't covered by my train pass.

Oh cool, there was just a commercial on about these scanners that will bill you automatically. Like, they'll give you some sort of card or chip. Most people put it in their wallets, but I've seen some people put it in their cellphones.
What they do is they'll run the card/chip over these scanners at stores and even at the train stations instead of buying tickets.
They're pretty sweet. I'll try and get some video of that, too. It's AWESOME.

They also use 3G on their cellphones. (Which is why mine didn't work, my phone doesn't support 3G)
3G stands for 3rd Generation of cellphone service. You can have video chats with people over the cellphones, and even surf the web extremely fast. (Well, a lot faster than our phones in the US).
I stopped at some clothes store and tried on a couple shirts last night. The girl working there helping me pick stuff out didn't speak any English. But she was able to use her cellphone to go onto Yahoo and translate. Worked pretty darn slick.

Well, it's running on 10am. I've gotta wake up for breakfast before 9:30.



Dewa Mata


That's the Yen, by the way.

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