It's going to be a very short blog entry today, because honestly we didn't do anything worth writing about. The mission for today was to get ourselves from Hiroshima to the opposite side of Toyko without murdering the children.

I'm happy to report that it was a remarkable success.

We checked out of the Reino Inn without any of the fanfare that usually goes with a Japanese hotel farewelling a guest. With this hotel, we just left. Since the room keys were just cardboard, and we had paid the bill on the way in, we just walked out. The staff probably don't even know we've left yet.

Would we stay there again, or recommend it to anyone coming to Hiroshima? Probably not. Not that there was anything wrong with it. The location was great, within a few minutes walking distance of the peace park, and the rooms were clean enough, but for the price, I can't help but feel a little short-changed. Not bad, but not great. I'm sure there are better and/or cheaper options around.

So out onto the cold street, and onto the final damn Hiroshimite tram/streetcar for the trip. These are relatively comfortable, but they aren't that cheap, and they aren't that fast, due to the number of stops they have, in addition to the fact that they are also subject to traffic and traffic lights, unlike trains.


So into Hiroshima station, and when Veronica booked the Shinkansen tickets she was informed that the reserved seating was fairly full, so we couldn't have seats together. So she booked whatever 4 seats she could (since Isabelle doesn't get a seat, since she's too young for a rail pass. As we did on the last trip, we decided to try our luck on the unreserved car, which worked out quite well. We got an entire row to ourselves, so 5 seats, which made the journey much more confortable. Swapping to a connecting bullet train at Shin-Osaka station, again we tried our luck on an unreserved car, and got even luckier. 2 rows of 3 seats on a crowded train, and since we're foreigners travelling with children, no Japanese person will dare sit in the 6th seat near us. It was the most comfortable train journey I can remember. 10 minutes out from Shin-Osaka station Isabelle fell asleep, and she slept for almost 3 hours.


Not much happened of any note on the journey. There were a few areas which looked like they'd had a decent and very recent snowfall. And as usual on this journey, as we approached Fuji all cameras came out, and everyone scrambled for the left hand side of the train to take photographs.

Honestly, a few people got out their cameras to take a photo. I was the only one scrambling. No matter how many times I see Fuji however, it is still a pretty amazing site. Today it was a cloudless today, with great visibility, to the point where a pillar of smoke rose from the peak of Fuji, and in the photos that I was able to get in between powerpoles, bridge pillars and trees, the detail of Fuji, such as the walking trails, which zig-zagged up the side of the mountain, were clearly visible.

As we arrived into Tokyo, we performed a few train switches and battled Tokyo train and subway crowds (which is about as much fun as it sounds) and eventually arrived at Maihama station, which is at the doorway to Tokyo Disneyland.

We pointed out all of the interesting Disney bits to Isabelle on the way towards the Disney gate, and as expected she went bananas when she caught sight of Cinderella's castle.
Since we're staying at a Disney partner hotel, we lined up, and minutes later caught a complimentary shuttle bus which, after a drive which felt like hours, but was closer to 20 minutes, dropped us at the door of the hotel. Actually, it dropped us at the door of the hotel next door, since our hotel is made up of 2 almost identical premises. One pink, and one yellow. We got off at the yellow. Turns out we needed pink. So, after a short walk through the icy night air we arrived at our actual hotel.

To exhausted, and too damn far away from anything fancy for dinner, we again settled for a cheap and easy dinner from the convenience store downstairs in the hotel, which in this instance is a Lawsons, and put the girls to bed.

They're going to need their sleep. Tomorrow is a big one, with a trek across half of Tokyo planned.