Day 02 - 29/12/1997: Morning in Japan: It felt great waking up the first morning in Japan. The air fresh and the sky was clear. I made an early start to the day, because we had a long way to travel. I would be meeting Ritsuko's family for the first time and I was a little nervous, but at the same time excited about what lay ahead.
We had to get to a town in the South of Kyushu called Kobayashi, and to get there we had to take two trains. Firstly we had to catch a train from Hakata to Kumamoto where we would have a five hour transit before taking another train to Kobayashi.
The train we caught to Kumamoto was called the "Tsubame" which means "sparrow" in Japanese. The first time I rode the Tsubame (which travels at 135km/h) it was the fastest train that I had been on so far in my life, however it was not a Shinkansen and I would go on the Shinkansen one week later.
It was very nice on board the Tsubame more like being on business class on aeroplane than being on a train. They even had a train hostess who walked up and down the train selling ice cream, drinks, snacks, bento (lunch) boxes, and o-miyage (souvenirs).
