It was just after six when I eventually returned to the waking world, and after a spell tapping away at the Travelogue it was time to sort out the laundry, repack the bags and try to answer the key question for the day.
How cold was it likely to be in Matsumoto?
There was, of course, a significant supplementary question along the lines of how well Hughesy was going to handle it.
Given the uncertainties those questions produced I ended up with a pair insulated pants, the new merino jumper and a handy scarf in the back pack, having donned several layers of the new thermal clothing to keep the upper portions cosy. The insulated pants were there in case the jeans I was wearing failed to live up to the task.
The load included a couple of bottles of water since a man is not a camel, but in this case, with the backpack on I must have looked like one.
There was, however, one significant element that seemed to be missing. One of our visits to Kathmandu in Townsville had yielded a pair of gloves since I knew we’d be heading up into the mountains where the hands might need protection. Now, with the prospect of temperatures in the low single figures, they were nowhere to be found. I was sure I’d packed them, but was forced to concede that I may have left them on the living room table a couple of thousand kilometres away.
Still, there wasn’t a great deal I could do about it when the time came to head down to the conveniently located Kishibe station. The gloves question gave us something to occupy our minds while we were waiting for the train upstairs in ShinOsaka.
We could probably have done something about breakfast back in Kishibe, and we definitely needed something to tide us over through lunch before the Japanese banquet in the onsen resort that evening. I ended up with beef sandwiches, which were definitely interesting, and there was something more traditionally Japanese for Madam.
Armed with the breakfast supplies, we made our way up to the platform, where the shinkansen was as punctual as you’d expect it to be.
Aboard the train, the fifteen minute leg to Kyoto provided an ideal window to get breakfast out of the way. The iPad came out as we left Kyoto en route to a change of trains in Nagoya and notes for the first part of today's report were finished by the time we hit relatively open country for the next part of the fifty-three minute run.
Looking out the window, the countryside was much greener than I expected, with many evergreen trees. The stubble from the last rice harvest in the paddy fields and the familiar jigsaw pattern of farmland, housing, commercial and industrial operations filled out the landscape. At one point, we headed into a tunnel through a mountain range with an extensive quarry operation and a zigzag roadway ascending the range, something I thought I might be able to locate through Google Earth, but subsequent attempts haven’t yielded results. I need to make a more accurate assessment of where the shinkansen line runs.