Japan Day 10 (Gunma to Tokyo)

We didn't get to bed until god knows what time, the night before. Probably made worse by me insisting that I needed to email Benny all the details and ask if he could help with the pressing passport matter. The nice thing about Japan is not everyone locks there internet like here in Australia, so we walked a couple of blocks and boom...free internet!

Fast forward to 6am in the morning and my phone rings, it's Benny, saying the bus office only opens at 9am, but that he will ring first thing and try and get it sorted for me. Ahhh such relief! Very awesome to have a Benny in your life.*falls back to sleep*

Little past nine, Benny rings and lets me know that my passport was handed into the police station and that we needed to go back to Numata and collect it, around noon. Benny asked if I had ID, because the Japanese take this all very seriously to which I replied with a 

"don't be silly, they have my passport, it has my picture in it and I'm picking it up in person!"

So we were in Takasaki and I had really wanted to go back to one of my all time favourite places...Kappapia, an abandoned theme park that I had stumbled upon by accident last time I was there! The last time though my battery had died half way through exploration and I never really got all the shots that I wanted to so this was the time to relive the magic!

We travelled back to the good old bus depot, had some more awkward conversations trying to explain where we wanted to go though finally working it out in the end.  This time there were no smooth 'hoping straight on the bus' sailing, we had ages to wait for the next bus, so we wandered the streets of Takasaki again

Pretty uninspiring place for Ben and I, so we just walked back to the bus stop and waited along with a bunch of cute old ladies.

Eventually we're on the bus headed to the Byakui Dai-Kannon, aka the giant statue in the image of Buddha! Once you see the Buddha you've seen it, I was more excited to jump fence and show Ben the theme park!

Cute dogs deserve their picture to be taken!

So Ben and I wandered down the path and I could hear construction coming from up ahead, my heart died a little. I told Ben that it wasn't looking good and it really wasn't...

I'm not sure what this says but I'm guessing something like stay out or construction in works. We saw another sign up ahead displaying the new park plans for the space and although I was kind of expecting it, as 6 years had passed, it was still a sad moment for me. Ben said something like "you were lucky that you had the chance to see it when you did" and that was a good thought to remember.

So the gods had stopped smiling on us and I wondered if we had been Onsen cursed!

We got the bus back to Takasaki and then the train to Numata which is quite close to Minakami...noooooooo! Don't worry we never went back to Minakami, though maybe it would have presented itself in much better light, during the day!

Benny told us to get my passport from the police station in Numata, so we asked at the train station, thinking we knew the word for both where and police...doko desu ka koban??

The station guy looked at us like we were idiots and pointed passed the taxi to the big brown koban sign, which you can see, far left, in the pic above, duh!

We were pretty chuffed at this stage muttering stuff like "gee how easy is this!"

We walked in all confidently and stated our demands to the 3 guys in the koban station. They bring over the laminated foreigners board with pictures and simple explanation. One of them being "lost passport" I quickly point to that. The police dudes huddled back together and look very confused. So what does one do when things look bad...call Benny, he spoke to the police guys and Ben and I saw their expressions change from confusion to understanding..hurrah! Turns out my passport wasn't here but at the real police station in numata, who would of thunk it!  We motioned at walking there but their worried looks returned as they tried to explain it was too far. 

Cab it was!

Hoping in a cab and trying to explain "other koban place" became more difficult than we thought.  I pulled out my phrase book and this time pointed to the real police word!
We were on our way!

We rock up at the police station and gee Benny was right, it's all very serious.

 There was one police man with very proper English and thus begins the interogation

police man: "what was in your bag?"

me: "blah, blah, blah, bread, blah"

police man: "what do you call the bread?"

me: "errr....pastries!"

Everything was very exact and detailed and we waited and waited.

Finally I got handed over my pastry bag with the pastries still as there were when I left them, half eaten! My passport and all my loose change that I had dumped inside the bag as well! Ahh Japanese honesty you make me smile :)

So we wandered around numata a little, looked in some cool shops

Swimmer you're still my favourite!

Got some snacks!

jelly in a can anyone?

I was keen to walk back to the train station but Ben was being very sensible and took out my phrase book and walked into lawsons

Taxi's are funny, they have automatically open back doors for you to hop in!

We then hopped on a train and made the longer journey back to Tokyo. It was a nice feeling heading back to somewhere familiar. Asakusa had become our little home and we had a lovely hotel and friendly service staff to come back to! We got back around 8.30pm and decided to go out for a nice dinner, we picked this rad Korean/Japanese restaurant

We ate gyoza, delicious meat, Korean hot bowl thingy, okonomiyaki, plum wine and sake. 

Ben got out the phrase book and when we left, lay down some nice Japanese on the friendly guy that had  served us, next thing the chef is coming out of the kitchen with packets of seaweed snacks for us to take home

It was strange but incredibly sweet!

We then went to the arcade, played the drum game, which even though I opposed it at the start eventually got into over the holiday period :P

and hey we definitely slept very well that night!