Tokyo to Yokohama – Thursday 25th August
Today was the first day of my journeys around Japan. Pretty much over the coming week I would be heading around Japan by Shinkansen, something I have always really wanted to do. The “bullet trains” as I called them as a child had always interested me and getting a chance to use them was going to be a childhood dream.
Todays journey would give me 2 Shinkansen rides as rather than do just a day trip to Yokohama from Tokyo like most people do, I had decided on stopping off on the way to Kyoto thus giving me the opportunity to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Although this would only give me a full day in Kyoto I was willing to make that sacrifice (stupidly).
Up bright and early as had been usual most of these days I have been travelling there was one real reason to be up and going early. As I was staying in Shinjuku, I had to catch the JR lines into Tokyo station first before I could board my Tokkaido Shinkansen to Shin Yokohama. I had decided to go this way so that I could store my bags at Shin Yokohama for the day (my suitcase was travelling ahead of me and is actually pretty well priced, about $15AUD to send a suitcase from Tokyo to Kyoto). However Shinjuku as I found out is the busiest train station in Tokyo with around 4.5 million riders per day, and rush hour is just not fun.
So my 8:33 train to Shin Yokohama (Hikari 505) would mean the earlier I get out of Shinjuku the less hassle it is going to be. So I aimed to be on a train to Tokyo station no later than 730 to try and avoid some of the crush getting to the station, but really I just got moving as soon as I could get ready. After a quick free breakfast of the usual for me in the morning, I was off to Shinjuku Station via the tunnel that runs along the street from the Hyatt. It was an easy but slow walk with my bags and had me boarding a train to Tokyo around 7am. Awesome work, but still, the train was packed for about 2 stations so I still had to try and push my way on with bags and that was not easy.
Reaching Tokyo station was easy and as I had already scoped out where to go, I took my time in getting up towards the waiting room for the Shinkansen as the platform usually didn’t get released till about 20 mins prior to departure. I waited around without any music as it turns out my ipod is broken so some of my time today would be dedicated to obtaining a replacement to last me till I get home (thank god I can download music on the fly these days).
The wait was fine, and as soon as the platform went up, I made my way up to Platform 17 so that I could grab a spot on the platform and watch the trains come and go and hopefully get a half decent shot of our train arriving. This journey this morning would only be short but it was still the anticipation of it that was making me feel like a little kid.
The train that would be ours pulled in from its journey and was soon cleaned and replenished ready to go. The Japanese sure do know how to turn a train around. What took the crews here a good 15 mins would take over an hour back home for a train 1/10th the size. Once the train was cleared they announced boarding (I think) and as soon as other people got on, I did the same (monkey see monkey do).
Hikari 505 – Tokaido Shinkansen
Tokyo Station to Shin-Yokohama
0833-0852
Ordinary Car – Car 7 – 700 Series
The train pulled out late due to the weather (it was a touch rainy) and we were soon cruising along at high speed making a quick stop at Shinagawa before getting back up to speed for the trip down to Shin Yokohama. This journey was only going to be 19 mins but it was fantastic and I loved every little second. I scoped out some of the carriage to find out how I need to store bags for future journeys as for all but this one I was going to be getting on at an Intermediate stop so would need to act fast once getting onboard.
The legroom is good but the seats a little small, part of me wishes I had paid for a Green Car pass but the difference was just not justifiable for the journeys I would be making and considering there are no Green Cars in Tokyo, it would go to waste pretty much.
Soon enough the journey was over and I was alighting onto the platform at Shin Yokohama and needed to find my way around to store my bag for the day and then hop another train down to Yokohama Station itself to explore the city some more.
Yokohama to Kyoto – Thursday 25th August
After a morning of exploring Yokohama I returned to Shin Yokohama for some lunch at the Ramen Musuem and a little bit of silliness all mixed into one. With food in my belly (and plenty of it) and some souveneirs in hand I headed back to the station to get my new mp3 player up and working and synced with whatever music had lying around (one half decent song and some random French music my friend Yena had given me).
Once all done and my Train was up on the board, I made my way up to the platform to again enjoy the sights and sounds that is a Shinkansen station.
Hikari 519 – Tokaido Shinkansen
Shin-Yokohama to Kyoto
1552-1815
Ordinary Car – Car 14 – 300 Series
The train arrived a few minutes early (thankfully any delays from earlier in the day have disappeared) and as soon as the doors opened I hopped on board and found that the car was half empty. So after originally stashing my bag back at the end of the carriage, I moved it up to above my seat after a few minutes since it was obvious no one was going to be sitting next to me.
This time the journey was going to be longer, so I settled in for the ride, Tablet out to read and put a good dent in War & Peace, snack, Tea and Camera in hand I was all set. This time you could feel the speed in the older 300 series trains but in saying that, the seats were pretty similar if not a little bit more basic. One thing I did notice though was the buffeting you get when you pass another train or in most cases a Nozomi train passes you, god damn that is a jolt that wakes you up. More than a few times it jolted me out of a doze I had.
We passed Mt Fuji, covered in cloud as expected, and cruised at high speed all the way through the Japanese country side. It was an awesome journey and now I know why this was a child hood dream.
Pretty soon we were coming into Kyoto and it was time for me to get off sadly. O well, I will survive. Upon arrival at Kyoto I disembarked, snapped a last couple of photos then trekked my way to the Subway for my journey to my hotel.
Kyoto to Osaka – Saturday 27th August
Today was to be my shortest ride overall on the Shinkansen. A total journey of about 14 minutes, but in reality I could of just done day trips to Kyoto from Osaka but it would of meant I would miss out on somethings really. So this journey was pretty much necessary in my head, but probably not to others.
The morning overall went ok and I arrived at the station with plenty of time after negotiating the subway with a suitcase. There is only 4 platforms at Kyoto station for the Shinkansen and 2 go to Osaka, 2 to Tokyo so it wasn’t half obvious where I needed to go, so off I went and camped out close to where my carriage would come in, to watch the trains and smash through some more of War & Peace (almost half way through and I started back in Canada).
Hikari 503 – Tokaido Shinkansen
Kyoto to Shin-Osaka
1016-1030
Ordinary Car – Car 7 – 700 Series
The train arrived as expected 2-3 minutes early and after letting the mass crowds disperse, I jumped on board and stashed my suitcase at the back of the carriage and dragged myself towards my row. Unfortunately I had to get my seatmate to remove her bags from my seat however she then removed herself entirely from the row to someone elses seat, so me thinks that someone who shouldn’t be in the carriage was camping out there.
The train journey flew by, watching as we rolled out of Kyoto and within 5 or 6 minutes started hitting open country side and then literally within another 5 minutes we were coming into the outskirts of Osaka. It was a flash in the pants journey really.
As we pulled into Shin-Osaka we passed the yards of I’m assuming the Local Shinkansen base and there was 700 series and Railstars lined up for as far as the eye could see (ok maybe 40 or 50 of them but it was still an awesome sight.
The train arrived into the station and after letting everyone else out of the carriage so that I could get my suitcase without having to fight through people, I was off into the Bedlam that is Osaka and to find my way to the main Osaka station in Umeda.
Osaka to Hiroshima – Monday 29th August
Today was another journey further south with the usual process. Up early, gym, check out, walk to station. Rinse repeat etc. I hated leaving my hotel and its luxurious surrounds but unfortunately it had to be done. After doing the traditional Osaka past time and eating myself to ruin (the japanse word is kuidaore) the night before, I figured that I should really walk to Osaka station and get the train to Shin Osaka, rather than getting a cab. It was a quick walk without bags and only a bit longer with them. I knew where to go this time so it was fairly easy.
After arriving at the station, I made my way round to the Central Gate, up the escalators to the platform and low and behold the train I needed was but a few minutes away. Simple as! From there it was a quick easy 5-6 minute ride out to Shin Osaka where it was back through the confusing labirynth that is Shin Osaka JR gates towards the Shinkansen gates. Now since I had not eaten yet and intended on eating on the train, I needed to find somewhere that sold bread or something more westerny for breakfast cause I really didn’t feel like a bento or a bowl of ramen at 7am in the morning.
After no help from the train barrier guard for directions (for some reason they don’t understand the word “Bakery” or “bread” I managed to get the information desk person to understand my actions for “Food Court” (imaging me shoving hand in mouth mimicking eating and then drawing a big square like area) and he pointed me in the direction of the lower floors with a warning that it is closed. Well stuff him I thought, I’m going to check it out. He was wrong, the grocery store (which was awesome btw) was open so picked up some lovely bread to go with a banana and some coffee and a bottle of tea for the train journey. My morning was set.
With now an abundance of time before the trip to go, I did the usual thing, wait it out on the platform watching the trains come and go while reading. It’s a good way to people watch to if your into that sort of thing. What I did enjoy watching though was the actions of the JR Train staff. Their hand movements, gestures etc when the trains are approaching and departing was totally foreign and interesting to me. It was great to watch.
Eventually my train showed up as next on the platform and so I moved up to where my car should pull in so that I could grab a spot for my suitcase first up without having to fight for one. As I was lining up a lovely tour group of Asian persuasion (not sure if they were japense or chinese) turned up and tried to push their way infront of me on the platform. With a quick “I do believe I was here first you can wait behind me” they moved out of the way. I know it probably wasn’t the nicest thing to do, but to be honest, don’t cut in line! Eventually the train arrived!
Hikari 495 – Sanyo Shinkansen
Shin-Osaka to Hiroshima
0835-1019
Ordinary Car – Car 12 – N700 Series
This was my first ride aboard the lovely shiny new N700 series. Boy are they pretty much the same inside but with a bit more flashier toilet area. Nothing much different with a 2-3 seating set up and the same style seats as the other train sets. What was different was the seat cushioning (much softer than the 300 or 700 series) along with the fact that power ports were highly evident. Either way it was good no matter what.
My seatmate was only joining me as far as an intermediate stop and once he departed I had the entire row (both sides of the aisle) to myself. Good way to travel. Unfortunately after not much sleep, It was difficult keeping my eyes open and I was nodding off here and there for most of the journey so not much reading got done. A shame really as there wasn’t much to see out the window with the majority of my time awake spent in tunnels.
A few little things spotted on my journey south was a 500 series shinkansen at one of the stations along with the old school 100 series as well . Both a sight to see (unfortunately no ride on a 500 for me and I didn’t even know a 100 series still existed in operation, in fact I saw 2 just outside of Hiroshima).
It was a pretty easy journey and once arrived at Hiroshima, I was downstairs, collecting a map and making my way to the Tram Stop… I mean Streetcar Stop for the journey to my hotel.
Hiroshima to Narita – Wednesday 31st August
This is the longest day of train travel I would have on this trip which meant if I wanted to be at Narita at a half decent hour to relax etc it meant being up at OMG o clock for an early train out of Hiroshima. Things were not looking up the day before when I had totally misunderstood my train time, thinking it left 5 minutes later than it would. Woops! But I was up, ready and good to go and in a taxi on the way to the station with plenty of time. Even the cab driver wanted to make sure I had plenty of time and made sure that the 5 minute cab ride would be ok.
I had found online a good timetable with the station platform arrival and departures for all the trains that go in and out of the stations, so I was fully prepared this time. As it was going to be a morning of tight connections, I was fully prepared. Today’s journey would have me in 3 sections. Hiroshima to Osaka, Osaka to Tokyo and Tokyo to Narita. All in all around 7 hours of Travel time but about 6 inside the trains themselves . When I arrived at Hiroshima station there was pretty much nothing open, not even Macdonalds so I just did my usual. Read and people watch (not that there was many people around). I did score photo wise with a 500 series Shinkansen pulled into the platform behind me running as a Kodama to Shin Osaka and a 100 series Shinkansen arriving into Hiroshima terminating its journey. What luck!! Soon enough my train arrived, a 700 series (boo) Rail Star (yay!)
Hikari 542 – Sanyo Shinkansen
Hiroshima to Shin-Osaka
0715-0854
Ordinary Car – Car 8 – 700 Series Rail Star
This was my first journey on the Rail Star which isn’t to much different on the outside than a standard 700 series but where it differs is inside. Inside they are only Ordinary seats, no green car and its only 2-2 seating. No piggy in the middle on this train, which means the seats are bigger, more comfortable as well. More like a Green Car for the entire train. It looked good. Pretty soon we were under way. I read for a little while before trying to call home to wish my mum a belated happy birthday and then broke out my prepacked breakfast I had cobbled together from the Grocery stores in Hiroshima.
As the train cruised north, I half looked out the window, half read and half consumed my breakfast. I was going to miss the small cans of coffee you can get and after trying a very wide range it was hard to pick a favourite, but either way, coiffee in a can rocks. Where else can you get your coffee hit from a vending machine in small enough doses you don’t feel guilty having several!
It was a pretty unremarkable train journey as the same with the way down, it is mostly tunnels between Hiroshima and Osaka so the book was a fantastic distraction. I managed to smash through a good 15 chapters on this journey and soon enough we were coming into the outskirts of Osaka. I positioned myself bag in hand, ready to go at the doors so that once we arrived I could jump in a lift/escalator and get myself across the terminal as I only had about 10-15 minutes till my next train so getting stuck/lost was not an option. Thankfully there was a train timetable in the train vestibule and after checking it over, I noticed that the train started in Osaka so it would be easier because as soon as I got to the platform it should be there.
When we pulled up, the lift was directly outside the door I was standing at and managed to make my way to the next train in less than 3-4 minutes and that included trying to find the lift for the new platform after it was not where I thought it would be. The next train was waiting for me on the platform so I jumped onboard and stashed my bag then found out the first bad thing for this journey. I had been seated on the right side of the train… nooooooooooooooo. I needed the left if I was going to get a view of Mt Fuji. Well that is just not good! Without time to go down and get a new seat assignment, I figured I would just move to an unreserved car around the time we should pass Mt Fuji (cars 1-5 would be unreserved and being in Car 7 would mean I wouldn’t have to go to far from my bag).
Hikari 510 – Tokaido Shinkansen
Shin-Osaka to Tokyo
0913-1210
Ordinary Car – Car 7 – 700 Series
The train was extremely empty in my car and would hopefully stay this way if I was lucky. I could hope right? I found my seat, dropped my stuff and quickly jumped back onto the platform for a few photos before getting myself better settled. Within a few minutes the train was rolling out of the station heading for the north and Kyoto. Kyoto was our first stop and it would not be long to get there. Unfortunately my new friend Clare was on the train after mine, so no chance of seeing her today ?
The train pulled out dead on time so we were very quickly speeding north and after getting an estimated time we would be around Mt Fuji from the conductor I proceeded to get stuck into some blog writing and then at Kyoto watched almost the entire car empty out and only be replaced by 3 or 4 people (about 10 or so got off). The cart attendant started walking around tempting me with her fine smelling coffee but I was determined to try and wean myself back off coffee before the end of this trip and getting back home to reality in a short 11 days! I could not believe this trip was coming to an end.
My chance of a window seat in the same car around Mt Fuji dropped dramatically at Maibara when it felt like the entire car filled up, damn! I had a seat mate for only a little while as he departed at Nagoya. The train continued on north, loading and unloading passengers. I tried to focus on my book but just at times could feel myself starting to close my eyes. I set an alarm to wake me up in case I did nod off for approximately 10 minutes or so before we got to Mt Fuji. Luckily I had no threat of falling asleep at this time really as by now I was wide awake.
Since the car had filled up again after Nagoya there was no chance of me getting the correct side to see Mt Fuji from the same car and I couldn’t be bothered trapsing back to the unreserved seats, so I just hung out in the vending machine area near a window till I could see what I thought was Mt Fuji. Again, cloud. A lot of cloud. We passed Fuji station dead on time as pointed out by the conductor and then I wasn’t to disappointed.
I returned to the seat and continued to read, there was less than an hour left of this journey as we started to come into the more outerlying areas of Tokyo. Once we hit Shin-Yokohama I knew we did not have much time left to go and as Shinagawa approached, I packed up my stuff and made a break for the end of the carriage to extract my suitcase so I could get out of the car quickly. I had decided after getting stuck in the most uncomfortable seats from Osaka I was going to use up some of the last of my Cash and upgrade to Green Car for the Narita Express. I just needed something comfortable and some support for my back really.
After pulling in my first stop was to hunt for a bento box for lunch which after the first stand I found was charging exhorbitant rates so found the Newdays (convience store) which was full of people getting bentos and rice balls so figured they must be good and they were cheap as well. With lunch in hand I headed over to change my ticket over to Green Car and after spending some of my last cash on the ticket, I walked across Tokyo station all the way to the NEX platforms which were on what felt like the extreme other end of the airport.
Unfortunately there are no seats on this platform around near where I wanted to be and since I knew the Green car ends of the platform would be less crowded I just stood around and waited.
NEX 27 – Narita Express
Tokyo to Narita Airport Terminal 2
1303-1355
Green Car – Car 12 – E259 NEX
Soon enough the first half of the NEX arrived and then shortly after I boarded we were headed off. I got my blogging out of the way then sat back to enjoy my lunch as we cruised out of Tokyo in the peace and quiet of the Green Car.
With the update in my blogging done, I dropped the laptop back into my bag and secured it in the luggage area and returned to my seat for what was my first ever onboard Bento box in Japan. After almost 10 days of rail travel I was finally getting my bento box. It had taken this long as most of the trains I had booked onto were either early morning or late afternoon.
I had picked the healthiest looking bento (nothing in Japan is perfect) and also since I had not had a rice ball/triangle (onigiri) either I grabbed one of them as well, but I wasn’t sure what flavor or filling was in it, so it was a bit of a random luck going on. O well! The food was good and pretty soon we were passing through Chiba and then Narita itself. This is the way to travel I was thinking to myself. A comfy seat, plenty of space, peace, comfort and quiet. What more can you want (well a hot coffee in hand would be nice but an Iced Tea will have to do).
Pretty soon we got the arrival warning into Narita Terminal 2 and I was up and getting my bags ready. I knew that the train would not spend long at Terminal 2 so didn’t want to spend much time screwing around and I had Wasabi Kit Kats to find in Terminal 2 while waiting for the hotel shuttle. Once off the train, up into the terminal and explaining to the Security that I was just changing to a hotel shuttle, I was up into the Terminal hunting for weird flavoured chocolate.