Finally, the time to pack and leave my apartment had come.

I woke up at 9am because I was supposed to go to Suginami Sogo with Nagisa, except it turns out it’s exam week so we decided not to. I sat around and streamed manga until 3pm, and then I hurriedly packed up my things and left the apartment. I dragged my ridiculously heavy bag to the nearest main road, then gave up and hailed a taxi.

Rik: To Shinjuku, please.

In my mind I reshuffled my plans – I decided to go to Shinjuku, shove the ridiculously heavy luggage into a coin locker, then walk back to Nishi-Shinjuku and return my key before training it back to Shinjuku to meet Nagisa and catch my overnight bus. The plan was excellent, even fool-proof, and the taxi driver was a lost case and forgot to turn the meter on. So he charged me 300yen ($3) less than he should have.

Anyway, I got to Shinjuku, and found the coin lockers:

NOTICE: All coin lockers and similar storage facilities have been closed down from July 1 until July 12 as part of the increased security measures in preparation for the G8 Summit in Hokkaido.

… BUT I’M IN TOKYO! WHY WHY WHY WHY!!!

SO I ended up dragging the suitcase down 2 sets of escalators and finally getting back onto a train to go to Nishi-Shinjuku. I arrived, pushed people out of my way in my hurry to the elevator, got up to ground level, ran across a road and straight into Yoshizumi Home. I collected my breath, and got ready for what I thought was going to be a long talk again –

Araya: How was the apartment?
Rik: Perfect.
Araya: You can just leave the key and go; you look tired.
Rik: … thanks man.

So I got back onto another train with the STUPID suitcase and I went to Shinjuku. I then proceeded to wait around for 1.5 hours.

Nagisa finished her dance class and showed up at Shinjuku at around 7pm. We had issues finding each other, which was made harder as I couldn’t move because the bag was restricting me from doing anything. We finally found each other, then Nagisa asked for my “reservation info sheet” for the overnight bus. I had copied it from the computer (seeing as I don’t have a printer) so Nagisa read through it, then asked…

Nagisa: OK this is all good, except… what time is the bus?
Rik: …. aw shit.

So I called June and asked her to look it up for me. 10:50pm. Left me with almost 4 hours to kill.

We started off by eating in a basement restaurant of the place that coincidentally, the overnight bus was stationed outside. When we had finished eating (a combination of barbecued meats and rice + miso soup) Yumiko called and asked where we were. When Nagisa unsuccessfully tried to direct her we thought she’d give up altogether, so we finished up and left – returned to ground level where we spotted her almost instantly.

The three of us went into Starbucks and ordered drinks, and just sat around talking – then Emi showed up too. It hit around 10:30pm and I was really really tired by this point, so I just decided I’d let them go and boarded the bus.

The bus was good too – 3 columns instead of 4, so it’s all private (independant) seating. I really liked it. The only thing is – there were a bunch of drunk businessmen in the back, and I swear one shit himself. So I was glad to get off at Osaka almost 2 hours earlier than was planned…

The first thing I noticed about Osaka – that the guidebooks were spot on. People here do not wait for traffic lights, they cross whenever they want – it’s like Chinatown/Cabramatta all over again. Also, since Osakans love their time, some of the crossings have countdown timers on them – i.e. “60 seconds until the crossing turns green (the color is called blue here though)”. Had to laugh.

There’s more coming soon – hold tight!