Guess I should tell you folks how the trip wrapped up...
Now that I've been home for the better part of a month, I may as well tell you that the trip's done, and I successfully survived my first trip abroad (queue the applause).
I guess I'll pick up where I left off last...(this might get long, so if you choose to skip ahead, the basic gist of the whole spiel here is that I was in Japan, I had fun, and now I'm home).
The last leg of the trip from Tokyo to Hiroshima went off without a hitch. Found our hostel (which turned out to be a million miles away from the train station - after the fact, I read a review that said we should have avoided that hostel due to it's crummy location. Hindsight is 20/20, I guess), dropped our gear off, and did the one-day whirlwind tour of Hiroshima. A-Bomb Dome, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Children's Monument, Memorial Tower for the Mobilized Students, the Memorial Mound.....we were able to take it all in during a somewhat sobering afternoon stroll around the Peace Park. It was still a lot of fun, though....the weather was beautiful, random students of all ages stopped us to practice their English, and got to see everything I wanted to see.
After the park, me and my buddy spent some time in the downtown area browsin through shops for souvenirs and hittin the occasional arcade. Hiroshima, as it turns out, is very similar to Winnipeg; everything's kinda the same size, the downtown has a similar layout....it seemed a familiar place (aside from the tropical weather and the train system, of which Winnipeg has neither). Upon returning to the hostel, we ran into some folks we knew from the hostel in Tokyo, and proceeded to spend our evening engaged in various merry-making.
Next day, we kinda bummed around, then caught a nightbus back to Tokyo (which helped to put the speed of the Shinkansen into perspective; it took us four hours by Shinkansen to get to Hiroshima from Tokyo, and fourteen hours to get back to Tokyo by bus). After another day and night of partying, my buddy left for home, and I stuck around for what I thought would be my one extra day in Tokyo. Met the new crew at the hostel, spent the night having a good time, and woke up on the third, ready to go home.
That's when I ran into a little snag.
See, I kept my passport in a (by now long-empty) moneybelt during my trip, and had left it on a shelf with the rest of my gear before turning in the night before. However, some early-rising first day tourist in Tokyo had done something similar, and took my moneybelt instead of his when he left for the day. And so, not being one to panic, I did the only thing I could: laugh about it with my fellow travellers. About an hour before my flight was to leave, the guy walks into the room asking for me by name. Turns out he'd tried to cash some traveller's cheques, only to discover he now had a Canadian passport. I could have killed him, but instead I grabbed it, collected my gear, and made an unsuccessful bid to make it to the airport (which is about an hour away by train, in Narita). I did get a last piece of Japanese hospitality, though....on the train, a woman who'd just returned from studying in Toronto figured out my nationality, and decided to buy me a drink. We got to talking, and when she learned of my plans to return in a few years to teach, she gave me all her contact information and told me to look her up once I got back to Tokyo and she'd help me get settled. I thought that worked out pretty nicely.
Anywho, so I get to the airport, change my flight for one the next day, and get on a train back to Tokyo after deciding I didn't feel like sleeping in the terminal. Met some tourists just arriving to Japan (an American, a Korean, and a Canadian), and spent my second "last" night in Tokyo hanging out with them and my friends from the hostel in Roppongi. Did some dancing, spent the last of my money by accident on vodka, begged for train fare back to Narita in front of a club at 5am, then slept on a park bench across the street from the hostel until it was time for me to make the journey to Narita one last time.
All in all, Japan was one hell of an adventure. It's allowed me to make some concrete choices about my education and my future career, it's solidified my decision to return to teach English for a year....and more then anything it's given me the travelling bug pretty bad. I just want to get on the road again. I'm thinking I may have to get involved with a student exchange somewhere....maybe the U.K. or Australia (the folks I met from both were pretty agreeable, and it'd save me the trouble of learning another language). We'll see what happens. All I know for certain is that the last thing in the world that I want to be doing right now is falling back into the old routine back home....which, coincidently enough, is exactly what I'm doing. Damn.
