26-May-2007 -- After convincing my boss to let me have a Friday off on Monday, I wanted use the three-day weekend for a visit to a nearby country. Most of the places I had in mind had the discounted flights booked already, however, since I was reserving in a short notice. Eventually, I settled for a seat on a flight to Nagoya, Japan for a Friday-to-Sunday trip. Unfortunately, it turned out that Nagoya was raining all day on Friday. Still, I carried on through visiting museums near Sako station with soaked shoes.

Unwinding at the hotel (and drying my shoes), I searched the internet on my laptop for more interesting places to visit the next day. Then I remembered the handheld GPS receiver that I packed with my sack 'just in case'. I loaded confluence.org to see if there's a confluence nearby. Sure enough, there were a couple of them. I decided to try this one since Kariya is a relatively straightforward half-hour train ride from Nagoya.

Saturday rolled around, and it was hot and sunny - it was as if it didn't rain yesterday. I toured around Inuyama area until early afternoon, then I decided to go down to Kariya via Meitetsu train line. I rode south to Kanayama first, then switched to a limited express train heading eastwards to Toyohashi there. When the train stopped at Chiryu, I transferred to a train going south to Hekinan. I got off at Kariya station.

The GPS receiver indicated that I was about 1.3km southeast from the confluence, so I just zigzagged through the streets relying solely on the receiver's screen until I could get closer to it. After about 15 minutes' walk, the receiver told me I was within about 50 meters of the destination. I looked around and found myself to be in a narrow street with some two-story houses, which began at the end of a neighbourhood park(#4: looking east from the confluence) and ended at a parking lot for an apartment building(#5: looking west).

Initially, the receiver indicated that the confluence was located somewhere in the parking lot, but after letting it settle down and triangulate the more accurate position, The coordinates were decided to be in the middle of the aforementioned street(#2: the GPS coordinates), between two houses(#1: looking north, #3: looking south). I wondered if the residents of the houses know that they're lucky enough to live right next to this sort of coordinates while taking a gratuitous self-portrait at the confluence. Seeing that I needed to go back to Nagoya for a more touristy business, I took a final look around at the place and headed back to the station with the help of the GPS receiver.

By the time I did return to Nagoya, though, I was too late to visit Nagoya Castle, which was on my plan for that day. So I went there in the morning on the next day (Sunday) and then took a plane to return home.