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Tokaido Day 16 – Friday, 24 November: Rest Day

The morning was spent doing laundry, catching up on admin and writing yesterday’s blog entry. And just generally taking it easy. 

Japanese hotels have smoking and non-smoking floors. Someone decided it was a good idea to put this hotel’s laundry on the smoking floor. I think it’s a great idea to have an in-house self-serve laundry, but was this really the best place to put it?

This afternoon I visited Hamamatsu castle, which like the others I’ve seen is a reconstruction – and in this case apparently much smaller than the one that originally stood there.


There are good historical displays inside, some with signage in English, and views of the city from the top floor:


Waiting to cross at lights on the way back to my hotel, a salaryman did a double-take before pointing at the Kathmandu logo on my jacket. I think he thought it came from Kathmandu, as he pulled out his phone and showed me a photo of the Nepalese capital, evidently taken on a trip there. I did my best to explain that it was actually an Australian brand and that the jacket, like me, came from Sydney. All was going well until I tried to add that I had actually been to Kathmandu myself – which I obviously did a really bad job of, as he seemed thoroughly confused. But of course we parted with many bows and ‘arigato gosaimasu’s.

A word on accommodation

I’ve been staying at three-star business hotels. They’re certainly not the most romantic accommodation option in Japan (for that you’d want a ryokan, or traditional inn) but they’re reasonably priced (around $50-70 a night), plentiful and usually clustered around train stations. On the downside, they’re bland and the rooms are – by Australian standards – tiny. The current lodging – the Hamamatsu Hotel – is the smallest yet.


I’m typing this sitting on the roll-out stool that’s under the desk, but I might as well be sitting on the bed – I can reach the desk quite comfortably from there.

The bathroom, like others I’ve encountered so far, is a modular unit – a single cube of plastic that’s apparently just dropped into place and then plumbed in. Spacious it is not:


This shot is actually taken from outside the bathroom looking in. The threshold, which you can just see at bottom left, is for some reason a good 30 cm above the floor of the bedroom, reducing the headroom available inside the bathroom. After a shower, I have to open the bathroom door to have enough room to dry myself without constantly thumping the walls.


The basin protrudes out over the bath/shower, which is clearly a design feature as the outlet currently poking above the basin also swings around to the left when you want to fill the bath (given that I can’t sit in the bath without my knees sticking above the rim, that’s something I tried only once).

Oh, and the bed is rock hard.

I’m checking out tomorrow and transferring base to a hotel in Kanayama, not far from Nagoya city centre. I’m hoping for something a little better…

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