I have a couple of crazy travel days (not counting the ones where I travel between countries) and this is one of them. Look at how I started the day off. I had to cross this THREE TIMES, once to get to the shinkansen way too early and twice to go and return from the Starbucks.

I’m visiting my cousin to see the new grandkid (my third cousin twice removed?) and to see my aunt.

My aunt has lost her sight but fortunately she hears just fine. My mom can see OK but she can’t hear much. Weird how that works.

My cousin’s place is not that far from a shinkansen stop but it’s one of the little-used stops. Since the rail pass I got limits the kind of shinkansen I can ride, the scheduled stops are less than ideal. I had an OK trip from Shinagawa to Shin-Osaka, but from there I was on a train that stops at every station. Not only that but I only had six minutes to change trains.

I got to the second train (without much spare time) but I was counting on getting a passable bento from someone selling them on the train. As soon as we left Shin-Osaka, they announced no “wagon” service (nobody selling food from a cart going up and down the aisles.) Looking carefully at the train diagram, I also found out that there were no vending machines on the train! I asked the conductor if there was a good stop to buy a bento. Nishi-Akashi had a six-minute stop but no bento stand. The only chance I had was a three minute stop in Himeji. I made it!

I got to my cousin’s without much more trouble but I found that I’m using 300MB of data per day on my phone. That’s going to cost me.