Friday, 2 November 2012
I wasn't a well boy when I surfaced on Friday morning, but that probably comes as no surprise under the circumstances. Given my 'druthers I'd happily have given the previous night's middle bottle a miss, but under the circumstances the other party doing the serious drinking wasn't familiar with Australian wine and it was, as far as either of us could tell, the only Australian red on the list.
That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
Fortunately, after a big night, this was a big travel day, and one that, initially, didn't involve a great deal of humping the Black Monster up and down staircases. If it had, I suspect there may have been fatalities involved.
If you are seriously hung over there are definitely far worse places to be than a speeding Shinkanen, and the transfer from Sendai to Omiya was relatively painless, and Omiya kicked in with the novelty factor since we were boarding one of the double decker Shinkansens. Madam's concerns about stowing the luggage were probably real enough, but weren't the sort of thing you wanted to think about when you've got what P.G. Wodehouse was wont to describe as a morning head.
Sure enough, once we'd boarded and made our way upstairs on a rather tricky curved stairway that would probably have posed no difficulty at all for a teetotaler unencumbered by Black Monsters, there was the regular space behind the back seats in the compartment where said monster could be stowed.
Apart from worrying about luggage space, Madam had organized lunch, which, predictably, came in a bento 
container and, somewhat less predictably was completely demolished with the aid of chopsticks. I'd only actually managed to do that once before but am currently disinclined to get myself back into the state which seems to have made the feat possible.
After the Shinkansen we progressively downgraded, first to a Hakutaka which was still rather shmicko, then onto a local line operated by Toyama Regional Railways (Toyama Chihō Railway) a third sector company that are obviously doing it tough in an environment where travellers are increasingly likely to head where they want to go by car or bus. The company operates railway, tram, and bus lines in the eastern part of Toyama prefecture, with their main line running from Toyama to Unazuki-Onsen (which was where we were headed). It's part of a mere 93.2 km of lines to hot springs and the mountainous region of Tateyama.