A Little Lost

Today we packed up and headed to our next host in Miyagi prefecture. JR at Tokyo train station are a real pain in the ass. We wanted to exchange our Hokkaido rail passes for when we needed them and to buy a special offer JR East pass. These are supposed to be available from any midorimadoguchi (green window offices). In Tokyo station, there are about 8. However, each one is operated by different parts of JR (East, West, Kyushu) and although they are meant to be the main place to go for english-speaking travellers, they spoke appalling broken english and didnt seem to know which office we needed to go to. So after following assistant-drawn maps to about 5 of the offices, we finally got our East pass and were told to exchange our Hokkaido pass when we were in Hokkaido. But of course, not every train station in Hokkaido has an office, which renders having a Hokkaido pass useless until we discover one. I was not so impressed.
After we got to our destination, we were concerned to find no phone at the rural station to phone our guests. We explored and found some Japanese builders who said there were no phones in the area and our destination was over an hours walk away. So we headed back onto the train, went 2 stops down and used the phone at a busier station to contact the host. The host came to meet us halfway along the walk to hers, so we found her after about half hour. In all, we wasted about 2 hours by not being able to phone her from the station. I was getting very fed up of today.
Eventually, we met Chieko and she was really nice. We ate some great Thai food and talked a bit. Then we got an early night because it was already dark by the time we got back to the house. At least I don't have to face JR (Japan Rail) again for another week!