Trip to Akita (Northwest Japan)

Last weekend we played up in the north of the main island of Japan - in Akita. Last year when the team made the trip they took the bus and different people said the trip took between 8-10 hours. Luckily this year the team decided not to take the bus but rather the bullet train - or as it is called in Japanese - Shinkansen. The bullet train only took us 4 hours.

The bullet train has seats sort of like an airplane but with a little more knee room, and you can get up and move around whenever you want. They also have a snacks cart that comes through every so often and offers snacks for purchase. And if you happen to be able to fork over the money for a first class ticket they have a first class cabin. We just saw it through the window and it looked pretty nice.
The tickets for the bullet train for our trip, there and back (round trip) costed 35,000 yen - so with the exchange rate that would be $425.
If your wondering how fast the trains go they can reach speeds of 240–300 km/h (149–186 mph) and they have plans to increase speeds on one of the routes to 320 km/h (199 mph).
Last weekend we played Akita and they are near the top at our conference. We played a great 1st half the first game, but then it seemed like we got content and stopped moving and attacking the second half and ended up losing. In the second game (we play Saturdays and Sundays here) we played a lot better and played solid the whole game and ended up winning.