Sunrise, Sunset

The sun is about to set here in the next hour or so, and tomorrow begins our trip to many wonderful places in the Kansai area! I'm so excited!!! It should be loads of fun, if I can just make it through the many train transfers and long ride there. We went and bought our tickets this afternoon. It's a special train pass catered towards students where you can go anywhere in Japan, unlimited rides for five days for about $100 bucks US. It's called Seishun 18 Kippu, and it's only available three short periods a year during the school breaks. The catch is, you have to take slow trains everywhere. No express trains or Shinkansen's (super express bullet trains). The fastest thing I can get on is a special rapid train. So local trains and rapid trains only. We're about to go to the grocery store and buy some snacks for the ride. We spent most of today getting ready. Doing laundry, buying the tickets, finishing up planning our itinerary and whatnot.

So after today, no more updates til Saturday night at the earliest (maybe another today if I feel like it). I was going to bring my laptop, but I went to Yamada Denki yesterday and bought a hugememory card instead, 4 GB. My old card is 1GB. Now I shouldn't need my laptop and I can take plenty of pictures! It was quite a hassle, it didn't work on my camera at first because it's an SDHC (high capacity) card, but then I went back to the store and the guy told me I needed firmware which I could only download in Japanese! arghghgh!!! So frustrating! Long story short, turned out that he was wrong and I found an English version and now the bloody thing works. No bringing my laptop leaves me with one less thing to carry. Downside is no internet, but I really think I'll be too tired and busy to get on here anyway. I need to be able to fit my junk in lockers at the train station because I want to stop in Himeji and see the most awesome castle on the way home!
Oh, and for those who care, the pictures were taken from my balcony, right before the typhoon came through here.