Toyama!

Yesterday we went to the northern coast of the main island of Japan, to the city of Toyama. I'm told that lots of Russians (and Brazilians) live there, but I don't think I saw any. We went to meet my pen-pal, Saiko! She is one of the nicest people ever! She went with us to some restaurants and helped us order, and showed us around Toyama. It turns out she does not even live in Toyama; it takes her nearly an hour to get there! This is the first time I have met one of my penpals.


Here I am after getting off of the Thunderbird express train from Osaka to Toyama. And there is Toyama castle! Real pretty.


Here we meet Saiko! See how nice she is! Oh gosh! Then we went to karaoke and sang our little hearts out; Saiko even sang a few songs in English, real hits from the 80's that are still super-popular here in Japan! Then we went to a Japanese-style pub and ate some really good stuff. I had ochazuke, which is green tea poured over rice, with other things thrown in for good measure like a plum and crunchy bits of baked rice I think. Whatever, it was yummy.

The best part was that we got on the correct train back to Osaka, even though it was the last train of the
night, and we would have been screwed if we had gotten on the wrong one or missed the last Thunderbird.