| Day 7 – 19 October 2007
Things are moving fast, very fast. I am sitting on the Shinkansen shooting through the Japanese countryside at about 400 km an hour. I am plugged into the train’s power and sitting in a nice comfortable seat, similar to the one when flying SAA business class. Unfortunately there is not internet connection on the trains yet but I understand there are plans to wire the trains in the near future with free connectivity. My thought goes to the Gautrain and I wonder if the experience will be similar to this one. The conductor bow each time he enters and leaves the compartment. The same goes for the girl pushing the trolley full of food and drinks.
Next to me sits an old man. He can not be a day older than 93 and still walking like a youngster. It must be the sushi I think as he unwraps a box full of goodies that he bought from the shop on the station. I unwrap my own purchase and open the bottle of cold green tea. We silently compare content and I decide that his choice is much better than mine as there is a lot more sashimi in his box. I am sure that one can buy a take-away from the station restaurants every day of the year and never eat the same stuff.
Koibooi is missing home today. It has been a while since I left Cape Town. I am missing wrestling with my son on the lounge floor and having cheese and wine with my lovely wife. I feel sad that I will not be able to attend my son’s first ever cricket match this weekend. He has been picked for the school team. I put on my earphones and fire up some music on the laptop.
We left Niigata (nie-ga-ta), the heart of Koi land this morning after a breakfast of tofu, mizo soup and rice en route for Hakata. I wonder if the All-Blacks don’t have any roots here? There will not be any koi on the agenda today, only traveling and some time to catch up with e-mail when I get back to the hotel.
At the station I had a interesting experience. A young Japanese boy was talking to his mother while pointing at me. They laughed as if sharing a secret joke at my expense. Next time I will definitely go for Japanese lessons before coming here. Shortly before the train arrived the mother tugged on my shirt sleeve and said to me “my boy said he did not know there were real giants in the world”. My 6 foot 6 frame must have really looked enormous to the small Japanese boy.
At the hotel we plan tomorrow and decide to have an early evening to recharge the batteries a bit. Tomorrow we are visiting some farms that have recently harvested their koi so hopefully we are in for a treat to see some very high quality fish. After the farm visit we are heading for central Japan to a place called Nagoya. There Koibooi will be meeting up with a friend from the UK. He has found a pub that is going to be open at 04h00 in the morning for the rugby but at the moment he refuses to take any bets. I wonder why?
This is Koibooi closing off on a short report for today |