Trips to Japan

Day 11 – back to Nagoya

I went to pick up my new passport today.

My old passport was not machine readable, so checking in for international flights were somewhat cumbersome. This will make things easier. Furthermore, the new Japanese passports has extremely weak RFID chip, making entry/exit to/from Japan even easier and faster and error-free.

It’s pretty amazing that they can get such passport ready for all applicants in a week. It comes with a price, though. All fees and train tickets included, it costed me 18,440 yen – about $150. Le sigh.

I had one more shopping to do while in Nagoya – making a stop at Hard Rock Cafe Nagoya. I was done with my passport business at around 10AM. I remembered that the cafe opens at 11AM, so I had some time to kill.

I could take a subway. But it’s only 1.5 miles – a walking distance. So that was my plan. I killed some time at a department store, Tokyu Hands. There, I found an umbrella for Evan. It’s extremely light. And it’s pink. How long does it take for Noah and/or Alex to destroy it is anyone’s guess… See if she can keep it out of their reach…

Once I got to the cafe, the sign reads it doesn’t open until 11:30AM. Ugh.

Luckily (or not so luckily), there is Yamaha Music Center very close by. I hopped in, and started browsing for music scores. I made an unplanned 3500 yen shopping – a collection of jazz standard (many popular songs that many Japanese would know) arranged for solo piano. That’s something I need to practice before my next trip to Japan.

The cafe itself is pretty tiny. It was quite hard to find the entrance from outside. Just like everything in Japanese cities, everything is crammed as much as humanly possible. Whoa. They had a full suit worn by Mick Jagger and… sorry, I don’t remember much of anything else there. It would be a lot more fun to visit there with someone else. I don’t have enough of tourist mentality in Nagoya area.

While I was having adventure in middle of Nagoya (walking under the scorching sun), Evan was having fun of her own. When I got home, I ate onigiri (rice balls) that Evan made.

Before I could get to my lunch, though, my uncle Shinsaku came to take my mom Yoko and Evan out to Nagoya. To where? To Tokyu Hands, the very same department store I was just a few hours ago…

Well, well, did she have a blast there too… She came home with hands full of goodies. Pens, markers, tapes, etc etc…. all cute goods.

Seriously, with all the healthy diets we’re eating and the amount of walking I’m doing, I must be losing weights during this trip. If I can keep up with this once I get home, maybe I can get back to 130 to 135 lbs range again…

1 Comment »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

One Comment

• June 12, 2007 at 4:41 pm | Reply
  Jen says:

  Hey, Evan-darlin’! I miss you so much! What are you going to do in the next couple days?

  Alex misses you, too. Today he said, “You can spell my name and my sister’s name. A-L-E-V-A-N.”

  I thought he was pretty funny!

  I know your teacher–do you want to know? I might call you soon.

  Love,
  Mom