The Quinn Family Excellent Adventure: Goodbye Okinawa Japan - Hello Kokura Japan

We were fortunate to meet up with our Okinawa host before our morning taxi. We gave her some extra food we had including half of the donut cake thingy. She was really happy. The taxi and airport stuff was super easy. We had a regular train ride to Hikata station, the nearest Shinkansen station. At the station we saw 3 ways to buy tickets. A crowded human counter, a crowded ticket kiosk and 2 free no cash kiosks. We got a little confused regarding what to order. Picking tickets based on your intended destination is easy. The trick is there are regular trains and Shinkansen trains. We purchased what we thought was correct and luckily a person aided us. From this type of kiosk you must buy 2 tickets. The regular train ticket and then a upgrade to the Shinkansen. The kiosk interface is not clear about that. Add to the mix there are reserved seats, sometimes mandatory and then there is the first class green car. Eek.

Doing all this wearing 22 KG's and carrying other stuff is sweaty. With tickets in had we found our way to the correct train track and waited. It's cool that the Shinkansen trains come in 8 or 16 car variants. The trains all stop in the exactly correct spot so the passenger simply have to line up waiting for the exact car they need. The green car, reserved cars and non reserved cars are clearly outlined. Our non reserved car is clearly indicated on our ticket. Here we wait in line for the train arrival. Skinkansen trains are known world round for being on time. Within the second. It's epic. Even though there were plenty of people getting on both ends of the car, there was no issue getting a seat. It's best to understand the direction of travel and the row number. If you are lucky, the train is stopped for the cleanup staff to prep it. Otherwise its a pretty quick getting on process. We noticed there is a little space at the back of the car to store a few large items. Plenty of leg room, under seat room and above cargo space makes it super easy to store our stuff. I had to follow the route with a GPS because we were not 100% sure our stop and it makes several. Efficiency is king and you need to prepare for departure before station arrival. The ride was so fast we had no time to really get into it before our station arrival. No worries, much more Shinkansen later

We chose to take a taxi from the station. The driver was great, taking right to the door. Our AirBnB host was super duper efficient with pre planning, documentation, directions and all that. Unfortunately we arrived a little early and the key holder was absent. No worries, time to chill and grab a bite. Our host was great to get the key holder responding and next thing we know he is standing beside us. Cool. We walked to his apartment and completed the check in process with a tablet setup like a kiosk. He had a portable translator that was wicked. Gave me ideas. Soon we had a key and were into the coolest apartment in town. Our place was located beside a beautiful stream. Bracketed by walkways we could chill anytime. Kokura was chosen because Michelle had a park she wanted to visit. Unfortunately it was closed. No worries, we had plenty of time to explore. A really nice park and waterfront was not far away. McDonalds, shops, healthy food was all nearby. Kokura castle was visited several times. Even the local Daison store was a nice place to visit and stock up. We found an Indian/Nepalese restaurant and had to return 3 times. They were awesome. It was nice to have a little Nepal food fix in Japan. No awesome Sushi place yet BTW.

I had some time to figure out the Shinkansen a little more. I tried for a while to find a single app or official website to arrange reserved seats. With our bags, hoping to get onto a Non reserved car is kinda stressful. I wanted to learn how to pick and choose trains, schedule and get tickets in advance. We are heading into the most popular tourist time in Japan. Best have tickets soon. The Japan train systems is so vast, that there was no single official method to arrange stuff. Forum's recommend HyperDia a web site and app. After a little while I had it down. The Android App had to be manually installed and kinda sucked. The Web site however is excellent. You can put in the starting and destination stations and it shows you plenty of choices. A few check boxes later and you can see Shinkansen trains you want to take, the departure and arrival times, track number. Epic. I had to be careful as our JR Pass does not cover 100% of the trains. According to the documentation, The "NOZOMI" and "MIZUHO" trains on the Tokaido, Sanyo and Kyushu Shinkansen lines are not covered. We had to be careful to take the "HIKARI" "SAKURA" "KODAMA" or "TSUBAME" trains else we need to pay. HyperDia supports not showing these non covered trains. Sweet. Now I am armed with a method to get trains times that work for us. Our JR Pass is only 21 days and not yet activated. I have to be careful to not start it too soon as much of our later travels might be long journeys. At least now I have a good idea of an activation date and a way to get ticket information prior to going to a JR booth. I'm a little more ready for the next Shinkansen to Hiroshima.

It was soon time to leave Kokura. We figured we could try the regular bus. Things went sort of smooth. You get on the back of the bus and grab a ticket. That went smooth. We picked the correct bus but going in the wrong direction. Oops. After it stopped, the driver was so nice. He gave us the ride for free and directed us to the correct stop. It was a little confusing which to take but the next driver was helpful in confirming the Kokura Station is his destination. Sweet. After Kokura Station and another manual ticket kiosk we were on route to Hiroshima reaching speeds of 302 KM/h WTF.

Chilling at the airport