The long ride

If I had to describe the bus trip from Tokyo to Osaka in one word... I couldn't. There's a couple of words in my head and none of them are good. Now, I'm not going to sit here and rave on about how terrible it was since a $150 slice off transport costs is always handy. I will say however, that if you have the money, go the Shinkansen! Considering the distance of the trip, the highway bus chugs along at a fair pace, especially over night when there's no traffic. What kills it is these tiny seats that stretch along each side of the two story bus.

I was lucky to have a vacant seat next to me, but nothing beats being able to recline... To bad these seats were locked into what I swear was a couple of degrees forward.

The dominantly Japanese crowd seated around me didn't seem to have any troubles sleeping. That was until I started blowing up my inflatable travel donut. I'm pretty sure I caught a couple of mild racial slurs from the back seat in Japanese but nothing could stop me from making the trip as painless as possible for myself.

All in all, the bus fell short of it's title 'Mega Dream Bus'. My bum was sore the whole way, the blokes in the back hated me and there was certainly no dreaming going on, but the BEST part is that I get to do it all over again on my way back to Tokyo where I fly out of...