Mostly Travelling

The station in Kurashiki is a mere 750 metres along a flat road from the hotel.  

So we walked. And took the train from there to Okayama, where we had tea and cake to fortify us for the rest of the journey.

We met Anpanman at the Okayama station

I had booked reserved Shinkansen tickets online on Wednesday and we had QR codes for the train. We had to get seat tickets from the gates, though. We also had to change trains in Kyoto and had separate QR codes for the two legs of the journey. The lady in the information centre at Okayama said we had to go out the gates in Kyoto and then come straight back in for the train to Gifu-Hashima.

In retrospect, we should have ignored this advice. The train left from the same platform. We had a 13 minute turn around. I sent Lindsey to go through and back while I watched the bags, then I was going to run through as well.

Lindsey completely vanished!!!!!

I got a message to say that it was very complicated. I couldn't quite see why. In the meantime, she was now on the other side of the gates and couldn't get back in. And I had all the bags.

Somehow, very slowly and with brute determination I managed to get all the bags to the platform gates. I swiped my QR code. On the second attempt it let me out.

I manoeuvred the bags through.

I could not find Lindsey. Lindsey could not find me.

Eventually we managed to reunite. I was at the gate where we had gone through on Tuesday. Lindsey had ended up at a completely different entrance. I'm not sure what had happened with her QR codes, except that her phone wanted to use her Suica card and not her QR code. The helpful station staff seemed to make matters worse.

We had comprehensively missed our train.

We booked new tickets for the next available train and contacted Austin who was planning to pick us up. We got on our train with no further problem. We were only an hour later than planned, which wasn't bad considering all the drama. And Austin was waiting for us, having spent the time in Plant 6 while we moved from Kyoto to Gifu.

I might not buy the tickets online in the future. We had plenty of time at the Okayama station and could have bought through tickets.

We went to the sushi place for dinner, with Kaori and Tatsuki. Much less traumatic.

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