Quick Recap of Sunday

OK, it is 5:00 AM again, and we're up and going. We hope to make it to Miyazaki - southern part of the most southern island today so we want to get moving. We are in Okayama which is in the southern part of the big middle island at a quite nice Toyoko-Inn. I hope to get a picture of it before we leave. (I did.)

We drove about 900 kilometers yesterday and have about 700 to go today. We only saw the southern part part of Tokyo but it looked huge from there. I can hardly wait to see the real downtown. People live on top of on

e another compared to Houston!

Driving is on the left side of the road. That was pretty easy to get use to, no problems now. The bigger issue is sitting on the opposite side in the car. Everything is backwards. When I want to use the turn indicators, I end up turning the windshield wipers either on or off.

Top three experiences from Sunday:

• ordering lunch at McDonalds,


• attempting to fuel the car for the first time,


• and checking into the hotel.

McDonald's - pretty busy, right at lunchtime in Nagoya. We walked in and were looking at

the menu on the wall and a very friendly young lady approached us and asked us what we wanted -in English!What a relief as the menu was not and we had to point at pictures! She helped us order. Joe ordered the equivalent of the Big Mac. I went safe and ordered Chicken Select and some fries. Well, the chicken was far from "safe" - it was unrecognizable. I am guessing it was thigh meat but whatever it was, it was so slimy -pretty much unedible at least for me. Good news - the fries were "spot on!" Here's a picture - notice that there just isn't much English!

Joe and I are having a hard time trying to decide if we need to learn how to speak Japanese or read it. If we could read it, we could be self-sufficient. Time to gas the car... Take a look at the directions. We must have stood there for a while looking bewildered. Finally the attendant inside noticed we weren't making any progress. He happily can out and solved our dilemma. We payed careful attention so we can replicate next time.

Checking into the hotel was only slightly problematic Sunday evening. We were fortunate in that one of the girls spoke a tab bit of English and with the help of a woman standing in line to check in we were able to figure out how to park the car down the street. With space being such a premium, most of the hotels appear to have little or none. This one works in cooperation with a public lot down the street. Anyway, we made it. Joe had learned about the Toyoko-Inn chain online from a blog. This hotel was very nice indeed. We were only able to get a single room which means we had one double bed that was shoved into the corner, but it sufficed. Again, you are provided nightshirts and slippers. It was very clean and comfortable. I prefer it to the one that cost nearly twice as much the evening before. And the good news is we can find one in every city!

I must say that we also found time to take a couple of airplane pictures! So, needless to say that must be considered the highlight for today! We found this great little park that overlooks the airport and there were 2 KC-767s just sitting there. There were also 7 C-130s in various color schemes but they were too far away.

Off for another day of adventure!