Today had been quite a roller-coaster, we left the hostel after packed everything and acquired us some umbrellas for the light rain. When we got to Tokyo station and was going to buy the Japan Rail Pass that would allow us free traveling by high speed trains (and all other trains as well) we were told that this was not possible without a voucher. This voucher could only be bought outside Japan. We didn’t believe this but had to find counter evidence or tips for a workaround on the internet. So we only had to find an open network, or an internet café. You might guess if when we actually needed access we succeeded in doing so.

After more than hour we gave up and headed for a place we knew would give us free internet for sure, the Apple store in Ginza. We got there and found to our demise that the lady was correct. This was the first time something in Japan were absolutely insane, in a bad way. We did some research, mailed the only travel agency in Sweden that were allowed to sell these holy vouchers for help.

We thank wikipedia who told us about some Seishun 18 ticket who was almost as good as the japan rail pass, maybe even better for some travelers. The pass only works on old shabby trains which means lots of stops in strange places but this didn’t seem like bad to us. The name of the ticket also explains that it’s mainly students or people under 18 who use this during their semester breaks, which happened to be right now. Filled with new hope we went back to Tokyo station.

When talking with the clerk I opened up my Macbook and also found and open network. Sometimes destiny just loves to play with you I guess. We bought one pass each for 11500 Yen which is around 700Kr. For this we are allowed to five (not necessarily consecutive) days of traveling. So we ordered an ordinary ticket for Odawara where we would catch some night train towards Kyoto/Osaka at 01:04.

We got there after some 70 minutes of traveling in what seemed like an ordinary subway train. It struck us that we were still in ‘Greater Tokyo’ when we got out, which might give you some perspective of how huge this city actually is. The rain was pouring down but wikipedia had told us about some castle so we hit the rainy streets with our white umbrellas.

We found the castle, it wasn’t crowded since it now also had gotten dark. We tried to take some pictures but the rain and darkness made the pictures look like something a drunk had captured with a broken camera. So we checked out some local cuisine and are awaiting the night train for more adventures. We also added another gallery and found how to let people add comments.

When going gets tough, the tough gets going 😉