Dear Elliot, Emmala and Eliza,

We got back to Rachel and Mike's place in Misawa today after riding on 5 different trains:

1) We took a train from Kinugawa where our hotel was to Imiachi. Then we walked from one train station in Imiachi to a different train station. It was about a 10-minute walk.

2) We took the Nikko train from Imiachi to Utsunomiya. This was the JR Nikko Express, which had lots of pictures of the waterfall and the shrine that we visited yesterday. Utsunomiya is a train hub with many different trains coming and going.

3) We took a shinkansen from Utsunomiya to Sendai. At Sendai, all we had to do was to get off of the train we were riding on and get on the next train that came into the station. That train was really two shinkansen trains hooked together.

4) We took the Hayabusa shinkansen from Sendai to Hachinohe. The Hayabusa is the fastest of all of the shinkansen trains.

5) We took an express train from Hachinohe to Misawa. It wasn't as fast as the shinkansen, but it only had one stop and went pretty fast.

When we got to Misawa, we got in Rachel's car and dropped of Mike so he could pick up Zeus from the kennel. Rachel then took us to their house and went back to pick up Zeus and Mike. And now we are all resting at their house. It has been an exciting and fun day, mostly riding on trains, but we got to ride on a lot of different kinds of trains.

Tomorrow is Sunday here, so we won't be taking any trips, but we will be having fun with Rachel and Mike.