Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

   This will be a short one, since I've got to leave for work soon. But I promise that beautiful pictures will be arriving shortly.
  So, on our trip back from Kyoto, Andrew was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the cart lady on the bullet train. If you buy 'Purato Kodama' tickets to ride the bullet train, each ticket comes with a free drink coupon. And since we hadn't used our coupons in the morning, that meant 4 drinks for the way back. (Or, two for him and two for me to take back to Yuki, since you're allowed to buy the expensive cans of beer with the coupons).
  Our train left Kyoto at 8:05, and it was due to arrive in Shizuoka at I think 10:14. Plenty of time for the cart lady to come around with her cart of lovely snacks and drinks, right? Hah. We waited for over an hour, and still no cart lady! After another 20 minutes of waiting, I finally asked the conductor where the cart lady was. His response?? 'Oh, sorry, it's too late for the cart to come around!'. Honestly?? Too late? Now, admittedly, these cart 'ladies' are often cute young girls, but I think they could manage to stay out past 8 pm?? And, as Andrew put it 'Shouldn't there actually be MORE cart ladies in the evenings, when everyone on the train is more likely to drink??' (Side note--apparently any time you ride the bullet train is a good time to drink, since I've seen guys drinking beer at 6 am on the train before).
  To make a long train ride and a sad story short, by the time we got to Shizouka, the kiosk where you can also use the coupons was closed! (For some reason the kiosks in Nagoya don't seem to accept the coupons, grr). So we still have 4 drink coupons that expire in a month...but Yuki is riding the bullet train to the airport in a couple of weeks. 4 beers for him, lucky guy!
  Here's the song Andrew and I made up about our now-hated Cart Lady:
 Cart Lady, Cart Lady
 Lend me your ear
Cart Lady, Cart Lady
Fetch me my beer!!!
Cart Lady, Cart Lady
 You are not here...
Cart Lady, Cart Lady
 I NEED my beer!
Cart Lady, Cart Lady
Once I loved you
Cart Lady Cart Lady
Now I want to...
Hit you with my shoe!

 Yeah, that last part might need a bit of work. Poor Andrew almost had the shakes by the time we got him home and tossed a cold can at him, evil cart lady!

                           
                                 Our free drink tickets, all ready and waiting for the cart lady

                            Note the sad expression of desperation

                               No more love for the cart lady now!