Excerpt from Todd's travel diary:

"It was a six hour ride on the Hikari Shinkansen from Tokyo to Hakata.   I was already asleep as we zipped past Fuji-san and I wondered again if I would ever catch a glimpse of that ghost mountain.  In three years and a dozen visits to Japan, I have seen Fuji-san exactly twice, both times just a hazy representation of itself from a balcony in far away Setagaya-ku, Tokyo.

From the window of the Shinkansen, we watched the scenery quickly change from the suburbs of urban Tokyo and Yokohama to the countryside, and sometimes again back into the urban sprawl as we passed through Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, and Hiroshima."

"By the time we pulled into Hakata station, the rain has started to fall.  I had a reputation in Japan for bringing about unpleasant changes in the weather and had earned my nickname 'Ameotoko' (Rain Man) many times in the past.  It seemed our vacation would be no exception.  Deep sigh.

Jayne's aunt and uncle met us at the station and whisked us off to the city of Kumamoto immediately.  We were heading for Kumamoto castle, to try to see it before it closed.  Unfortunately, we did not make it in time and walked around the grounds instead.  No problem, however, we could come back tomorrow morning.

We had a huge dinner at our hotel, which started out as kaiseki (small portions of food designed to be pleasing to the eye as well as the stomach.  Er, the Japanese stomach anyway.), changed to a Western style steak, and back to Japanese again.  We had skipped the bento lunch box on the Shinkansen.   For those of you who are not familiar with the Shinkansen Bento lunch box, it roughly translates as "mystery meal" in English.  If you aren't fond of culinary surprises (or disappointments), I advise you to steer clear.