After landing at Dulles, I rushed off to the next gate. Once there, I had to get into my baggage to get out my charger. As I do, I hear the call for my boarding group. I grabbed my cable and AC adapter, then got on board.

Which didn’t matter, because this flight didn’t have any outlets.

I had a solid gold seat, well, my seat number was 24K. In the middle of the plane, but no one right behind me, as the toilet was there. It was a window seat, which I don’t like. I prefer the aisle seat, as once the seat-belt light goes off, I can stand up immediately and grab my bag out of the overhead.

The food wasn’t bad, but they had the same hard bun and frozen butter, which cannot be spread. They gave us actual metal utensils, but I chose to use the chopsticks, just for fun.

Someone kept dropping things, or at least I heard a loud thump every now and then. I will choose to believe it wasn’t the plane falling apart.

Once in Tokyo, I head downstairs to the train. There was a ticket counter, with a man that spoke good enough English, that was able to sell me the ¥330 ticket. No problem there, except they didn’t accept cash, so I had to use my credit card for $2.33, ridiculous.

My map showed only 2 stops to Shinagawa station, but there were many more. Haneda airport is stop KK-15, and Shinagawa is KK-01, so 13 unnecessary stops. There seems to be an express, but I wasn’t on that one.

We get to KK-11, and then the train starts moving backwards. WTF?

Only we are not going back towards the airport, we are now going up in station numbers KK-20, KK-21… That is not the way I need to go, so at one stop, I get off and circle around to the platform going the other way. There is a sign showing direction to Shinagawa, so I get on that one. Again, not the express, only now I have even more stops to wait through, including a few that were a couple of minutes long.

At Shinagawa, I find the ticket counter for the Shinkansen, the bullet train. After waiting at least 20 minutes, a young lady comes to me and offers to show me how to use the ticket machines. Easy, peasey, no hassle at all, it even took cash.

Unfortunately, all that was left were middle seats, I ended up at 1B, so I got to stare at the wall for a few hours.

I really wanted a separate seat, as by now I wasn’t as daisy fresh as I had been. Running to terminals will do that.

The bullet trains are a bit disappointing, even though we’re going really fast, it is too smooth. It doesn’t feel like we’re going fast.

My iPad has a program that acts as a speedometer, but only in km/h and only goes up to 240 km/h, about 150 mph. We pegged it to the max. I have read that they get up to 200 mph, but can’t confirm that mine did.

Once in Osaka, I had to transfer over to the metro. I went ahead and was able to use the machine to get a ticket all the way to my destination.

There were 2 transfers I had to do, both down very long corridors. At one, I was mistaken about where I was, and got off 1 stop too soon. No big deal, just wait for the next one. But while waiting the train going the other way stops and I hear the message that that train is not accepting any passengers, it is going out of service. It was just before 9pm, and I didn’t know when the metro stopped. Oh crap, I might not get there on time. Fortunately, I was able to get to the correct station.

The host was going to be waiting at the room at 9pm, I was supposed to be there about then, but due to my stupidity, I didn’t arrive until 9:30. I was late.

She was standing at the main door, and I was able to remember the name. She didn’t know English apparently.

She lead me up to the 4th floor and proceeded to show me the unlock code, 6 digits, which I quickly lost track. Luckily, she also included that in a message on AirBnB. The door doesn’t lock itself, so I am just leaving it unlocked.

I took a quick look around and then went to bed.

I had wanted to walk around and find some food, but I didn’t think much would be open that late, plus I was worn out.