So two guys walk into a convenience store. One goes to the back to grab a bottle of Coke. The other one walks up to the counter and pays for three airline tickets. The first guy waits in line holding his 120 yen bottle of Coke while he patiently waits for the time it takes for the second guy to get his three tickets and pay his 58,900 yen.

Guess which guy I was.

This is one of the many times that I love Japan’s conbini system.

In very related news, you can purchase reserved seat tickets here up to a month before the train’s departure. Beth, Chet, Kate, and I were planning on going to Sapporo for the Snow Festival. It is extremely popular, so I figured it would be a good idea to purchase our train tickets the day they went on sale.

Unfortunately I ended up going to the station the night they went on sale. The difference between buying them the day they went on sale versus the night they went on sale is very much, well, night and day. For instance, at 10am on Tuesday they went on sale. This is the day. When I stopped by at 9:30pm all train seats to Sapporo on our chosen day were full. That was the night. Dammit. See the difference?

Luckily, there are multiple way to get to Sapporo, the next on my list being the ferry.

Today I walked over to my favorite travel agency (a clerk there speaks nearly fluent English), and the ferry was all sold out. Dammit dammit.

After much internal deliberation I decided to purchase plane tickets. I booked flights online, confirmation numbers, then walked across the street and paid in cash at the conbini. And really, it’s not all that unusual for me to have that much cash in my wallet. Cash is king here.

Tomorrow I’m going to go and pay for the ferry tickets back, which aren’t sold out. Yet.

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