Japan trip day 4: You can't win with weather
Rain. Typhoon. Not the gretest start of the day. My plans to visit Takayama and Hida are not going to work, as there a high probability that the trains might get canceled during the day. Since I have a non-refundable reservation at not-takayama, I can't afford the risk of going there. This greatly disappoints me, as this part of the trip is probably the one I had looked forward to the most. The trains are a bit in limbo overall, but hopefully I will be able to reach my destination today, as most of the rain in Kanazawa will calm down during the day.
Around noon, the rain stops and everyone darts off. Stuck with no plans, I decide to walk off to Kanazawa station and figure out if any trains are running. Turns out that the regular trains are mostly running on time, and the limited express trains seemingly having some cancelations. I get on the regular train without thinking to much about it. Turns out it's a full 45 minutes slower than the Thunderbird limited express, departing only 15 minutes later.
Figure 1 - The fast flowing and especially muddy water is probably a direct result of the typhoon
I dont't know if it was an effect of the recent typhoon, but the train was tilting at a noticable angle on several parts of the track, not only on stations, but on stretches where it made no sense.
A lot of big Japanese companies are named after a town or city, for example Toyota and Yokohama. I remembered this as the train made a stop at Komatsu.
I reach Fukui and head right for the hostel. The check-in process was a bit ordinary by now. The owner didn't speak much English, and he often resorted to talking into a phone app, which would translate and speak back. If you know how well japanese->english translation works, and how well speech recognition works, you can imagine with both stacked on top of it, mistranslations happen and hilarity ensues. "Do you expose it?" is one of the things that translator app said... With that done, I just crashed into bed. This was a bit of a wasted day, but you can't always count on the weather...
I'm starting to feel that going alone was a mistake. I need someone to push me into getting things done and face new situations. I seemingly have a genuine fear of even walking into a restaurant if I don't already know in advance that they have something I like and that I know exactly how the order procedure works. As a result of going alone, I've started putting off meals because I haven't felt it being worth the risk of not knowing what to do or not understanding what the staff is saying. I think it works better if I can plan in detail in advance where to eat what they have and so on. But with only a tablet and terrible wifi at best, that can be a several hour long ordeal. Hopefully, this situation will improve as I start staying at proper hostels again, with more people around.
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