I am writing this on the Shinkansen between Nagoya and Kyoto. I had my last breakfast with my host family this morning. We were all a bit sad that my visit was over. My host father was kind enough to drive me and all of my luggage to the train station.

We made a brief stop at Yamasa to drop off an (overweight I am sure) suitcase that I do not want to haul along with me. There is a service that sends your bags ahead to the airport that sounded like a lot less effort than hauling it through the Tokyo train system. You can do this from almost any convenience store but I was not sure if sending the bag 2 weeks ahead of my flight was OK and could not figure this out from the website. I had asked the Yamasa English liaison and had been assured that they had a system in place to deal with this. I had prepared a document with the details and when I dropped off the bag I was told by Yamasa staff that I could pay when I picked up the bag at Narita.

I was then dropped at the train station where I purchased a ticket to Nara which involves 2 transfers. I guess that the train system must be quite complex as generating a ticket took abut 2 minutes of poking at a large touch screen. I received 2 tickets one for the entire trip as JR local trains are used at both ends and one for the Shinkansen that is in the middle. At each station you need to insert one or sometimes both tickets into the gate to get through. When you get it wrong the gate closes, red lights come on and an alarm sounds. You then wait for station staff to sort out what is wrong. One of my tickets gave me a problem every time that I used it. Station staff just look at it and give it back so I’m not sure what the issue is. Maybe the tickets need to be inserted in a certain order?

On the train platform I noticed that I had missed 2 phone calls. I didn’t know either number but called one back and was connected to the Yamasa office. It was noisy on the station platform but if I understood correctly it seems that I had been misinformed and needed to prepay to send my bag via courier. I indicated that my train was in 3 minutes and that I had not planned to return to Okazaki. I then suggested that I send an email to the English liaison as I had just about exhausted my ability to deal with the situation in Japanese. I hope that I don’t have to go back as I will lose a day if I do.

I received a call while on the local train to Nara which I answered. You are not supposed to take calls on the train but my car was pretty empty so I did. Yamasa has apparently already sent my bag to Narita and I need to go to a post office in Nara, phone a person at Yamasa who sort of speaks English and let him talk to the post office clerk. They will arrange some sort of wire transfer of funds for payment. I hope that will be the end of it and wonder whether I will ever see my bag again. I hope that I can get some information about where to retrieve it at Narita as we have already deviated from what I thought would happen.

The train is climbing up through a dense bamboo forest. The sun shining through is quite pretty. Houses along the way are an older style, mostly stucco and tile roofs and there is a lot more open space.

When I arrive I find that Nara’s JR station is modern and spacious. There are a fair number of people but it does not feel crowded at all. It’s another beautiful sunny day that feels like early September in Vancouver. I follow the Google map on my phone which leads me on an unnecessarily complex route to my hotel where I check in. It’s about the same set up as K’s in Takayama, slightly larger and about twice the price.

I walk back to the post office that I passed on the way to the hotel and line up at 2 PM. When I get to a clerk I call Yamasa back. I get the person that I need to speak to and he tells me that he will phone me back shortly. I appogize to the clerk and get back in line. I get a call back and hand the next rather confused clerk my phone. He listens intently and I from what I can understand from his responses they are asking him to do something that is both impossible and that he does not want to do. He gives me back the phone and I talk to Yamasa for a bit. They need ¥1,990 to pay the courier. I need to give this to the clerk. It will cost some as yet to be determined amount to ship these funds back to Yamasa. I’m a bit confused as to why they cannot tell me how much this will be. The clerk gets the phone again and I hand him 2 ¥1,000 notes. He has been as far as I can figure writing out Yamasa’s address on a scrap of paper. He takes the money, puts it into a machine and gets back a bunch of change. He gives me back a ¥10 coin and puts the rest in an envelope and weighs it. It turns out that he is going to actually send cash coins and all through the postal system instead of issuing a money order! The cost for doing this is ¥560, pretty high in my opinion. I am going to point out that if he just ships the 2 bills that I gave him the weigh and presumably the cost will be lower. ¥10 is only worth about 1 cent. I decide against this as it will further complicate an already rather arcane situation. In due course the money is inserted into a special 2 layer envelope with interlocking flaps which are glued shut. I need to write my signature across the sealed flap and then several bar codes are stuck on the envelope. About 20 minutes later we are done. At ¥130 per minute cell time and the postal charges the cost of sending about $25.00 back to Yamasa has cost me about $40.00. I don’t know whether to be amused or annoyed by the whole fiasco. I still find it hard to believe that the postal office which is also a bank hasn’t advanced to a better way of sending funds.

I walk around for a while and buy a bento and head back to the hotel. I try to catch up on some writing, watch some anime and go the bed.