Well, I’m back home after about 10 hours of travel between trains & layovers from Kumamoto to Mukaihara. I was using the Seishun 18 pass to travel home, and it requires that you use only local trains. So it took awhile, but I got to see more scenery along the way. On the shinkansen everything wizzes by too quickly to see, and most of the route from Hiroshima to Fukuoka is underground anyways. Going the slow trains means you can see a bit of the coast, interesting buildings, ugly factories, peoples’ laundry out drying and other bits of everyday Japan (for example, I caught sight of a woman walking her two dogs - one stopped to sniff something, the other kept going, leaving her all twisted around).

Actually, when I got to Hiroshima, I decided I needed a break and some food, so I stuffed my bags into a locker at the station and hit the city. Picked up a small pizza from a bakery that sells them on the street pre-made and took it over to Peace Park to eat. Sat on the steps leading down to the river by one of the bridges, eating pizza while listening to song street performers singing/playing guitar on the other river bank. That and watched some America/European missionary-type accosting poor Japanese people that were crossing the bridge. Wonder what all the out of town school kids were thinking of him.

Finished my food, did a little shopping, then left for home before I spent all the money remaining from my trip. Finally got home a bit after 7pm, hit the grocery store for a few things and started trying to catch up on all the email & stuff that’s built up over the past four days…

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