Snow day!

So I awoke the following day to discover there had been even more snow. Apparently it has been snowing more than usual and snow killed 5 people yesterday.

It was snowing on the way to the station

It was snowing at the station

It was even snowing on the statue in memory of the inventor of twister.

In fact it was snowing so much that the trains to and from Sapporo were all cancelled.

That was when I realized something.

Hakodate station isn't the station that the Shinkansen to Tokyo leaves from. It leaves from Shin-hakodate station which is about 20 kilometers away. And so the train that was supposed to get me there was also cancelled.

There was a 30 minute transfer time in my schedule from the train from Hakodate arriving at Shin-Hakodate before the Shinkansen left.

Which meant that if I jumped in a taxi:

a) I had a little under an hour to get 20 km, in snowfall that was cancelling trains.

and

b) I had to hope that the Shinkansen wasn't also cancelled due to snow.

So into a taxi I hopped.

The snow cleared up after we'd been driving for a little while.

About $75 worth of Taxi ride later, I made it to the station with a few minutes to spare, and more importantly, the train was still running...

The Hayabusa Super Express

I splashed out for Gran Class

The Shinkansen's equivalent of First Class

Leather seats

Each of the parts can be moved independently.

The menu.

Due to the severe weather, I was the only person in First Class.

I had my own personal stewardess.

Unfortunately we had some trouble communicating, so we were reduced to writing stuff down on spare postcards.

Someone asked what the undersea tunnel looked like. Pretty much this.

Except every 8 seconds one of these would flash by at 140 km/hr

Anyway, gotta go, this complimentary sake isn't going to drink itself...