The Road to Kamogawa

(Part 1 of an account of our trip to Kamogawa City, Chiba)

Last Friday, Marvin and I went to Kamogawa in Chiba Prefecture to get kissed by the killer whales in Kamogawa Sea World and enjoy a fantastic view of the Pacific Ocean from our room in the Kamogawa Grand Hotel. Aside from a few hiccups and near misses, the trip was perfect – even for just 2 days we were able to forget about the worries at work, the burden of our personal problems, and the troubles of a busy and hectic life in Tokyo.

Our Wakashio Limited Express train for Kamogawa was scheduled to leave Tokyo at 9AM, so we woke up at the same time I do when I have work. Since Marvin works the graveyard shift, we are not used to sharing the bath and washroom for our morning rituals. In short, we left a few minutes later than expected and got to Tokyo station at around 8:40. One would think that that would be enough time to find the platform of the Wakashio train, but not in Tokyo. There was an obvious lack of signage and of course, most of the station staff was as clueless as we were. After walking around for 10 minutes (yep, Tokyo station is that big), someone was finally able to tell us where the damned platform is. He said it was on the other side so we would have to walk down this almost 800m pathway to reach the Wakashio platform. I glanced at my watch and realized there was no way we would be able to make it. It was already 8:53 and I don’t think we could weave through 800m of morning rush hour, human traffic in 7 minutes while carrying 2 overnight bags and a tripod. The amazing thing is we did! I was about to collapse from exhaustion when Marvin gave me a hug and said, “よく頑張ったね！ (Yoku gambatta ne!, Great job!)”. Awww…(o^_^o)

When we got to our car and seats, we saw that someone else was sitting in my seat! We politely told him that according to our ticket, we were supposed to be sitting there, to which he politely apologized and found another seat. A few seconds later, 3 girls also found their seats taken by someone else, so there was a lot of apologies and changing of seats. It’s surprising that the supposedly well behaved Japanese try to sneak in to the 指定席 (shitei seki, reserved seats) section from the 自由席 (jiyuu seki, non-reserved seats) section.

Anyway, aside from barely making it to our train and almost losing our seats, another hiccup was the weather. When we called the hotel just minutes before we left to reconfirm our reservation, the staff informed us that it might be better to go to Kamogawa Seaworld that day instead of Saturday, as we had originally planned, since according to the weather report, it was supposed to rain then. I was a bit hesitant to even consider changing our plans especially since if we went that day, we would just have half a day to enjoy Sea World. But Marvin convinced me that it would be better to go while the weather was perfect instead of risking it. Plus, he promised that we could go back on Saturday if half a day really wasn't enough (at an additional cost of Y6000 of course), to which I finally agreed.

After all hiccups have been settled and dealt with, we were finally able to go back to our excited out of our minds, wide eyed turista mode. (^_^)