Tuesday, April 15th
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Today we headed back to Tokyo. This time we decided to just take the JR train back to Hiroshima
station. Besides being heavy, bulky, awkward, and annoying, it wasn't too difficult to get to our Shinkansen train. ^_^. But, once we got to Tokyo and Ginza station.... >_< I think my biggest problem with my luggage came down to the fact that I decided to pack up my duffle bag with all my dirty clothes. The problem with it was that it was about 5 inches wider than all the ticket gates at the train stations. So, whenever I put my ticket in, I had to force it thru the gates. And once, we got to Ginza, our problems didn't end. It was cold, rainy and we didn't know exactly where our hotel was. So, I headed to the nearby police box to ask directions. When I asked where the "Renaissance Tokyo" hotel was and got nothing but blank looks from all the policemen there, I knew I was in a bit of trouble. After getting the address and phone number of it for them, one of them finally realized what the problem was. The real name of the hotel was the "Ginza Tobu Hotel" ("Renaissance Tokyo" was in small letters underneath the name). *SIGH* So, I was finally able to get directions to it, which, unfortunately, turned out to be about 5 or 6 blocks from where we were. Normally, that wouldn't have been a problem, but with all our luggage, we weren't gonna walk all the way there. So, we hopped on the subway and got to within a block of where we needed to be. But, once again, luck wasn't on our side. We took a left instead of a right and went about 2 blocks in the wrong direction!! *GRRR* When we FINALLY got to our hotel and checked in, we headed back to Shinjuku for some more shopping (after a bit of relaxing first that is. ^_^). I hit the usual places (Kinokuniya book store, Tower Records, and Virgin). After that, we headed over to meet a couple of my friends from one of the mailing lists that I'm on (the Zzz list). It's kinda of funny. They live in California, and we've never met in person before today, but we ended up meeting in Tokyo of all places. So, we just went and relaxed in the bar that was in their hotel and caught up. That was a really enjoyable time. I'm glad I was able to meet them finally after all the times we've talked on email.