Our official Thailand sailing trip doesn’t start until Saturday, Feb. 28 at 1500 but we started at 1500 on Thursday, Feb. 26 with a ride to the Shin station with a friend, Tracy.  From Iwakuni we rode the high speed Shin south to Haneda in Fukuoka for our flight to Thailand on Friday morning at 1140. 

Our train ride turned out to be the commuter train with high speed stops all along the way.  Most stops were less than a minute long for people to exit and enter the train.  So it took an hour and a half to get to our destination and no fizzy cart this time.  Darn.

I was pretty sure our travel agent said that our destination was the last stop on the southbound Shin route and there was no hurry in exiting the train and I figured it would be pretty obvious when we were at the right stop.  So we got there, but it wasn’t that obvious and people were getting on board so we thought – maybe this was the second to the last stop.  I asked a young Japanese person who I thought might know English (which she didn’t and who got several other (non-English speaking young Japanese people involved) if this was where we should get off and boy did we get a lot of different answers.  Not only yes and no but also when I showed them our ticket they saw Iwakuni and got really concerned.

Anyway, one of them led us to the uniformed Shin attendant standing in the doorway who ushered us off the train and pointed to the stairway.  So we figured we’d better get off and figure it out later.  Lucky for us we were in the right place at the right time and all was well once again.

From here we wandered through the massive train/transit terminal and out the other side and walked the 5 blocks to our hotel – the President’s Hotel at $59/night.  What a deal.  Tiny room but we’re tiny people so it worked for us.

The front desk recommended a restaurant about 6 blocks away that sounded like it was called the Booty.  She said that’s where they always go so off we went to have our “going away” dinner.  To our surprise there was no English menu and no English speaking people so once again we had a most interesting feast.  First course was sashimi – a whole platter of raw fish.

Then a couple of small dishes of lotus root with okra and some other green things.  And then another main dish of what I call grilled fish face  – which we got to pick out ourselves.

Fortunately, I know how to say sake which I’ve learned can wash down just about anything.

Then back to our tiny room for a great night’s sleep.