We have finally arrived at Nihonmatsu after two days of traveling. Just to quickly update what has happened so far since leaving Sydney yesterday. We caught a early morning flight from Sydney International airport. The flight had a 1 hour lay over at Singapore, which gave us just enough time to get off the plane and walk to the gate on the other side of the airport. It was one massive airport. We spent one night at Tokyo, close to the airport, as our plane landed around 11:30 at night.
The next morning, we woke up to a very warm and humid Japan. Nic was sweating so much we could see liquid dropping from his face.
From the hotel in South Tokyo, we travelled to Ueno Station, a major train hub.
This is where we lost Nic from our group, however we did gain a new member called “James”. “James” had lost his $100 Shinkansen ticket at a Bread shop, luckily it was still on the ground at the counter when he went back to look. We had started to walk towards the Shinkansen gate when a member of the public chased “James” down and returned a fan he had dropped.
The train ride showed no sign of the affects caused by either the earth quake in March and the subsequent incident involving radiation.
We departed the Shinkansen at Fukushima City. The city is less than (I think) 80kms from the nuclear plants, life appeared normal.
Many coins were deposited into vending machines in exchange for cold drinks today.
After a brief stop at Fukushima city, we traveled onto Nihonmatsu station.
What Nic, I mean James would look like as a Japanese train conductor.
This might be a familiar seen, if you look back at one of our earlier posts from the 2009 trip.
Happy to be at Nihonmatsu, but with no time to waste we checked in and headed for Ebisu circuit.
We luckily made it to the track before it closed at 5pm, only just. There were a number of Australian’s already at the track on the PowerVehicles Ultimate drift holiday, including Ashwin from Canberra.
Even though the tracks have been repaired, some of the facilities still require further work. From the PowerVehicles current set of garages, you could see the stock yard and garages which are still collapsed into the valley.
Hopefully we can give you some more updates tomorrow.
Great reading….
[...] After spending the night at the hotel, we moved onto Nihonmatsu. There is our previous post of the trip here Tadaima Nihonmatsu! [...]