A few months back, I hosted some pretty radical couchsurfers who were hitchhiking across the giant land mass that is Eurasia. After they shipped out of Korea and on to Japan, they told me that hitching in Japan is by far, the easiest country to do it in. People are friendly and honest; rarely did they have a chance to finish a cigarette before catching another ride.

So, we figured, what the hell, let’s try it.

But as the sun fell behind the skyscrapers and the temperatures dropped, our giggles over the embarrassment of holding up signs next to the highway entrance turned serious as we realized, we just may not be catching a ride tonight.

So into survival mode we went, but because it was a holiday and the entire population of Japan was in transit, there were few available rooms and no buses until the following Tuesday.

In the end, we paid a pretty penny for a high speed shinkansen which had us arriving in Miyagi a mere two hours after departure. We dropped our hitching signs for the comfort of an Asahi and a soft seat.

Not until we arrived in Miyagi though, did we realize the velocity at which we had just traveled. After getting off the train, another Shinkansen passed in the opposite direction; I couldn’t breathe, it passed by so quickly. There we all stood on the platform, eyes wide, mouth agape, “did you just see what I did?” we asked with our eyes, totally unable to speak.