Awoken at 7am by a couple of young girls who seemed to have little interest in the fact that we were awake packing bags until after 2am. Oh well, 5 hours sleep is more than enough. I walked down to the mall to get us some breakfast, while Veronica finalised things in the room. One other thing I have noticed in Sasebo is they have some world class bakeries. All of the different types of bread and pastries you could imagine, and many that I have never seen before (except for humble meat pies and sausage rolls, which dont exist in this country from what I've seen). So I returned to the room, and we had our hearty breakfast of miscellaneous bread products and coffee milks from the trusty 7/11. One thing about Japanese society which is working in our favour is the business operating hours. Most shops I have seen begin trading at 10am. Even the 7/11 dont get fresh stocks of bread products, sandwiches, milk etc until the 10am mark. This means that Hotels seem to fall roughly into line with this, and checkout isnt until 11am. Only an extra hour compared to Australian hotels, but it has come in handy a few times on this trip. Veronica phoned her Japanese teacher, Tagawa Sensei, in a final attempt to catch up with her before leaving Sasebo, as we did not get to catch up with her at the school yesterday. Luckily she had a free day, so she agreed to come down and meet us at the hotel and go to lunch with us. We didn't have to be in Himeji until 4pm at the earliest, so it worked out great for us (because we are staying at another Toyoko Inn business hotel, and they dont do check in until after 4pm to cater for business clients). While waiting for Tagawa Sensei to arrive, we were introduced to Kim Tooda, the Manager of the Sasebo Central hotel. We had a brief chat with him, and gave him a gift of some Australian badges, pens, and caramello koalas just as a small token of appreciation for the excellent rate he gave us on the room ($210 per night instead of the $430 it would have cost had we been rich enough to justify paying full price). Needless to say, without the discount, we would have been staying in a room nowhere near as lavish as the one we had. Also while waiting the girls gave a small gift to their favourite receptionist at the hotel. This girl, who would be no more than 21 at my guess, made a fuss of the girls every time they came into the hotel, and could not do enough for us. Charlotte and Angela were very sad to leave her, and I think she was a little sad to see them go too. When Tagawa Sensei arrived, we decided that we had plenty of time to go and get some lunch. I was expecting a walk across the road to the mall for a quick meal, or maybe a takeaway down by the waterfront. I'm not sure whether I could have been more wrong. Tagawa Sensei asked whether we wanted to go and get lunch from a little restaurant "on the hill". Yep, sure, sounds good. She's a local, so we might as well make use of her knowledge. It turned out that "on the hill" meant at the summit of the giant mountain that we visited yesterday on the Sasebo bus tour, and "little restaurant" translated to the finest dining experience in all of Sasebo. With a quick phone call, Tagawa Sensei summoned her friend, a taxi driver, who was at the door of the hotel within minutes. I started to realise one thing at this point. Veronica's teacher has many Sasebo connections. While talking to Kim Tooda, the boss of the Sasebo Central hotel a little earlier, he referred to Tagawa Sensei as "like family". So we boarded the taxicab, for another trip up the treacherously twisty road to the summit of the mountain. I honestly didn't think I'd ever be coming back up this road again after the bus tour yesterday. But 15 minutes, and a $23 taxi ride later (which Tagawa Sensei refused to let me pay for), we arrived at the Yumiharinooka Hotel (http://www.unimat-yumiharinooka.com/), an eye-wateringly expensive looking hotel which must have one of the finest views of all of the hotels in Japan. I learnt while I was up here that the mountains and islands around Sasebo were used for filming quite a few scenes from the Tom Cruise movie "The Last Samuri". I'm going to watch the DVD when I get home to see if I can pick the scenes. We were given a choice of Chinese and Japanese cuisine, which I left up to the ladies, and Japanese was selected. The adults each had a Kaiseki set (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiseki), and Charlotte and Angela had a "western" kids meal, which (at $20 per head) was a huge platter consisting of Chawanmushi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chawanmus hi), sausages, potato wedges, chicken, a mince rissole, a potato croquet, salad, a bowl of rice, miso soup, ice cream and mango's in fruit jelly. When their meals came out I was sincerely wishing I had ordered a Western kids meal. Neither girls at their rissoles or wedges, as they were sitting in gravy, so at least I got to eat them. Tasted almost exactly like my mums rissoles, so I was happy. Very funny watching Veronica and Tagawa Sensei try to feed Chawanmushi to Charlotte and Angela. Veronica tried to tell me that it was delicious, but after trying Charlotte's bowl, I made the same face, and reached for the water just as fast as she did. But when our first course came out, I began to get worried. I'm normally moderately brave when it comes to food, and I said that I would try new things in Japan, but the time had arrived to eat new stuff, and I wasn't ready. I had no time to psyche myself up, and what was worse is that we had a guest at the table who would be watching, so I wasn't free to spit the food out or push it aside if I wanted to. One thing I will admit about Japanese food, is that even though I still am not sure what some of the things were that I ate today, the presentation and attention to detail of the Japanese chefs is extraordinary. Our first course was a set of 3 dishes. I was able to clearly identify 1 of the dishes (prawns and caviar in mayonnaise), partially identify another of the dishes (mushrooms, caviar and fish liver, I think), and had absolutely no idea what the third dish was (but I ate the whole thing anyway, because it tasted exceptionally good). Needless to say, from that tray, the fish livers were returned to the kitchen absolutely untouched. 2nd course was sashimi. The moment I had been dreading. I know it is a national delicacy of Japan, but remember that I've grown up with a fisherman for a father. I've had 29 years of being taught to believe that raw fish is either bait, or in need of cooking. But I tried it. Soaked more than adequately in soy sauce, I hurriedly ate it, and surprisingly it was not too bad. I was expecting a strong raw fish taste like biting the side out of a flathead, but it wasn't bad at all. Actually it had very little taste whatsoever, and was obviously super fresh. Veronica loved hers, so I graciously let her finish my platter. Might as well give it to the person enjoying it more. But at least I can say that I tried it. And hours later I'm still not dead, so it must not have been too bad. Platter 3, grilled salmon, s***ake mushroom, some kind of potato I've never seen before, some kind of small egg (quail? sparrow? lizard?) modeled like a persimmon, a green spicy crunchy thing, a rice ball, a completely b*****ed prawn and a not-so-tasty purple flower. I say the prawn was b*****ed because I think it was prepared in a tumble dryer before being crumbed and fried. Never before have I had a rubberised chewy prawn. Terrible. Course 4, pile of potato containing melon cubes, with a tempura mushroom on top, all sitting in some kind of strange jelly sauce. Not a bad dish. I finished this one. By this stage I was wondering whether the parade of dishes was ever going to end. Finally, course 5 was coffee, ice cream, mangos in jelly, and a rectangular prism of something brown, cleverly attempting to pass itself off as chocolate fudge. It was seriously terrible, and a rude shock when the palat is expecting to taste chocolate on the end of the spoon, but the rest of the desert was fantastic. Again, I attempted to pay but Tagawa Sensei had already paid the bill. It would not have been a cheap meal. I hazard a guess at $70+ per head, plus $20 for the kids meals. I tried to give her money, but she simply would not accept it as we were her guests apparently. So with lunch done, we hurriedly left the restaurant, and headed out the front, only to miss the bus by seconds. Oh well, another taxi on the way down. I was determined to pay for this one. Again we descended down the tarmac rally stage hill, and back to the hotel to collect the bags. Taxi driver attempted to lift my pack into the car, and nearly had a hernia. I don't think he was expecting it to be quite as heavy as it was. We eventually loaded it all into the boot off the poor taxi, and took off for the train station (which was only an easy 10 minutes walk away, but it seems the taxi was instructed to take us to the station). Again when exiting the taxi I produced the money only to get told something forcefully in Japanese, and a discrete shake of the head from Veronica was enough to convince me to put my money away. The day has been great, but it has cost Veronica's teacher a freaking fortune. One unusual tidbit of information I have noticed, is that all taxi's have manual gearboxes. Since my first Japanese taxi ride yesterday I've been paying attention whenever I've been close enough to a taxi, and sure enough every taxi I have seen has had a real gear stick. At the station, we booked our seats to Himeji, and were given, 2 sets of tickets. 1 from Sasebo to Hakata station (Fukuoka), and one set from Hakata to Himeji on the Shinkansen. We made our way to the train gates, and when we got there it was we noticed that Tagawa Sensei had purchased a ticket for herself. I assumed she must need to go somewhere, so we continued up to the platform, and boarded the train, which was already waiting for departure. We found our seats, and with some goodbyes we got comfortable for the insanely long train trip to Himeji. It turns out that Tagawa Sensei purchased a ticket simply so she could walk us to the train. I must admit she made our last day in Sasebo pretty special, especially for Veronica. I would love it if she could come to Australia again so I could somehow repay the favor. Uneventful train rides. We switched trains at Fukuoka station, and boarded the Shinkansen. Even though we had 2 reserved seats, we lined up at the unreserved carriage door, to do our old trick of snagging 4 seats, which worked again, so we had a comfortable ride to Himeji. Checked into the Toyoko Inn without any problems, which is about the size of one of the cupboards from our last hotel room, but at the moment we are to tired to care. Himeji Castle in the morning, which is apparently a pretty special sight. Should be interesting anyway. I'm just hoping it is better than Nijo castle in Kyoto, which was also supposed to be fabulous. As I type these final sentences the rain is starting to beat down on the window. Hopefully it rains itself out overnight, so tomorrow is clear.