I wish we had gas that cheap. I remember as a grade school kid the bus driver complaining about 65 cents a gallon (he was the owner of a small bus company that ran about 8-10 busses in a neighboring district and 2 in ours). I also remember when gas prices dove down into this same range shown above in about 1998. That was heaven in terms of gas budget...
Of course, today's price range in the US (per Google average is $2.50 -- some places a lot more and some less), factoring in inflation, is probably not that much more than those 1998 prices.
At least we don't pay the rates in Japan or even worse in Europe. I've been seeing around 136 yen for a liter, which is about $4.90 -- $5 gallon in Japan. A quick Google search shows about $6 / gallon in Germany now, $5.90 in the UK, and $4.92 -- $6 in France.
It is now Sunday night in Japan, and at 10PM about 84F and humid in Kobe. As we walked home from church services around 1:30PM closer to Osaka, the Hankyu train station said it was 37C, which is about 98-99F. And probably 80-85% or more. One thing I'll be glad for getting back to Utah is the dry heat (vs humid heat -- would rather have dry moderate temps
)
Off to Tokyo in the morning on our last bullet train / Shinkansen ride of the trip. Supposed to be cloudy and rainy my wife said, due to Typhoon Krosa, which is some 900-1000 miles south of Japan at the moment and moving NW slowly.
Some shots for today.
The first, the cream and blue, was running on the Hankyu line and was sitting at the Sannomiya station in Kobe. It was out of service and left before our train came in on the same track. It is not a normal Hankyu train but probably belongs to a Hankyu subsidiary railroad (of which there are many). I thought it might be a Hanshin but could not find any pics online of Hanshin with those colors or scheme (I have a Hanshin model that looks like that but in Orange and Cream). (Hanshin merged with Hankyu in the 200x). The destination sign says "Hankyu Kobesannomiya". I have faint memory of having seen ones like this somewhere in Wikipedia or somewhere online.
The two maroon colored are Hankyu we rode today, and the side of a wagon was a third, and the green Kobe Subway rounded out our journey. I missed some shots of some trains we took (we took 4 Hankyu -- two express and two locals we transferred to/from to get to the station we needed to get to).
On one of the trains today, I think the local we took after services to the next bigger station to get the express back to Kobe, we sat in the second of two trains that were coupled together, and sat at the front right behind the driver cubby. Since this was a trailer and not the driving train, the driving cubby was empty. Interesting to look at though.
Lastly, I got a close up of the bird nest on the clock in the subway station. The poop drops down right in front of the self service ticketing machines (into and on a box the station personnel put).