If I’d believed in karma I guess I’d deserved this but for now I just consider feel unjustly treated by lady Fortune. After reaching Odawara and seen what’s to been seen we decided to be safe rather than sorry and was aiming for getting the tickets as close after midnight as possible. So after waiting out the clock we strode towards the desk where we would show our stamps and wait for the train.

The communication involved them marking a cross with their arms when I showed my note from the Tokyo station with the name of the night-train we were aiming for. After help from a guy from New Zealand who worked as a teacher here and another guy from the railways the message was clear; The train was cancelled due to a typhoon. We had noticed the continuous rain but to cancel trains seemed a bit unfair. This also meant we had nowhere to sleep.

We laughed and went back into the rain for search of some internet café or similar but had no luck. So instead we crawled in to an entrance of some karaoke place or whatever and found a unguarded powerpoint. This allowed us to replenish the battery for our lifesaver with saved mails, maps and so on.

After a few hours (I actually slept a bit) we went back to the station and slept homeless-style until about 05 when we met the New Zealander again. He and his girlfriend where heading the same way and we started traveling at 05:52 from Odawara. There where transfers all the time and I guess we would have missed a few if it wasn’t for our japanese speaking friend.

We hadn’t been able to check for mails from Sho (since the plan was to pay him a visit today) so we decided to take a break in Nagoya, the 3rd largest Japanese city to try get internet access and some food.

The station was quite big and according to a saved wiki-page the station was the largest in the world if counting floor area. We left the station and hit what we thought would be the main road but there weren’t many shops or stores but only office skyscrapers. Which was a little strange, this city wasn’t that small after all? In an attempt to cross a larger road we entered the subway and realized that below the streets there was another level of shops and boulevards.

Quite cool, literally, which was a nice change from the once again moist heat around 35°. When browsing we found a Dell store (which by the way I thought didn’t exist) with really cheap monitors and we managed to check the mail very quickly and saw that there was no answer from Sho. So we thought it would be better to start heading for Kyoto and try to get some accommodation there before sunset.

Just before leaving we checked the view from the ‘central station towers’ to get a better idea of the size of this city. It was big even though it only had 2 million inhabitants, or 9 if counting the prefectures. I’m writing this on the way to Kyoto, given that we manage to get all transfers right 😉