Saturday, April 30, 2011

Osaka Otsu and everything in between

I decided that I'm not going to write much on Japan until I finish my London blog.

But, miracle of miracles and oddity of oddities, here I am again. I am staying in Otsu, next to Lake Biwa, tonight in a business hotel, which despite its strong odor of cigarette smoke seems rather nicer to me than the Quality Inn I stayed at last night in Seattle. I flew into Kansai International Airport (the airport code of which is KIX, heehee) after an 11 hour flight that was mainly occupied by me flipping through what grammar books I brought and sorta kinda dozing. The airport is on a man-made island in the bay. It's impressive.

It took me five hours to get from there to here, but thankfully they were rather unhurried hours. I got lost a couple times but mainly just walked around the train stations a bit more than the average customer.

I remember coming into Tokyo and seeing flooded rice fields everywhere. I really didn't see any this time -- I don't know if the area between the airport and here isn't rural enough, or if it's not time to flood the fields yet, or what. I did see several fields of enormous cabbages.

The train smelled like Japan. Perhaps later I will try to figure out the components of said smell.

It's good to be back. I don't think I'm starting work for a couple days; in any case I shall be sleeping in for hours and hours tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment