hey all,
So I should preface this by saying that it is 1AM and I have had several rum and cokes with a buddy earlier.
Wednesday was not too exciting. I finished Dragon Age 2, and did some more packing. That was honestly most of the day. I also talked briefly with Michi and we called off the trip this weekend.
Thursday I got up and went over to Matsumoto all by my lonesome. It would have been just a little too stressful to try to coordinate with Michi this weekend, and the weather just didn't look that great. Matsumoto Castle was really amazing. I met with some mountain climbing retired guys who were volunteering as English guides to the castle and they explained a lot of the history and finer points of castle building/defense.
After that, I picked up some duck soba, which was really tasty. There is a special type of soba dish which Matsumoto is famous for, but I had to go with the duck soba, since it is one of my favorite Japanese dishes of all time. Following lunch, I went to the Ukiyoe Museum, which was difficult to find and a little bit small, but still worth the trip.
I should mention that from Yokohama it is about a 3 hour train ride to Matsumoto, so I had over 6 hours of commuting today. I arranged to hang out with a buddy on my way back to Yokohama, and we got caught up over some rum and cokes.
I literally caught the last train to Yokohama and they closed the station behind me. For some reason, a lone white guy with a backpack walking drunkenly from the station at 12AM is like catnip to your average streetwalker, and I found myself getting propositioned more and more insistently the farther I got from the station (until of course I was so far away that there weren't any streetwalkers). I had my MP3 player going, so I'm not sure if they were advertising as masseurs, or what.
Tomorrow will be spent recovering from today, and maybe doing some more packing.
Cheers,
