By Ferry Back to Tokyo

 May 20, 2023

The ferry guy with the light saber at the Kyushu side of the trip was overly concerned about the rear of the sidecar scraping when riding onto the top deck ("but I'm used to it scraping!") so we get to mix it with the trucks and two ridiculously low 'shakotan' cars in the belly of the ship.

My 21 hour ferry ride is spent mainly in bed, as my usual indifference to motion sickness fails me completely this time. Axel seems unfazed, at least after eating a pill, probably because not long ago he was out on The Atlantic on a navy ship in 42'/14 meters high waves, so this is nothing for him. "Glad I'm not a sailor", he says, not having fond of that navy job, as he was seasick a lot then.

Comfortably back on land in Yokosuka a bit south of Tokyo the hotels we check out have no vacancies (serves us right for not booking before boarding). This part of town is crammed with loud US sailors from the local navy base anyway, so we don't mind the one hour ride to Yokohama, where the nearest hotel with two separate rooms - Axel's usual request - is a posh one with no less than 24 check-in stations. Looks like an airport, and in addition to those it has two 'Family Mart' (like 7-11s) convenience stores aside from the usual hot baths and restaurants.


While most Japanese seem to obey the speed limits, the yahoos driving 'shakotan' style cars
like this one do not. Obnoxiously loud too, but then that's youth, so I'm not complaining. 
The shakotan cars are usually from the seventies or eighties, The Internets says, 
but the style works with newer cars too. How the driver got this one over the 
ramp here I don't know, because the front of the car sat even lower.

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