Blog

Day 5: Sapporo and a trip on the Lavender train

As dawn broke we started skirting through numerous concrete jungles and a dense fog gave everything the same washed out gray colour. Not the most pleasant scene to awake to and I wondered what I was in for. At just after 6:00am we arrived in Sapporo and we filed off the train. I have never seen so many zombies before! I stood around dazed for a while, barely even remembering to snap a photo of our train. I felt like death warmed up! The toilets were a popular spot and there was a constant stream of people brushing their teeth and trying to wake up.

I had a wander around the station and was sad to see even Mr Donut wasn't awake yet, nor the travel centre. I saw some posters for the Furano Biei Nokkoro Train which I had previously heard about so decided that would be a good escape from the gray haze that eveloped Sapporo. Off to the JR Seat Reservation desk and pointed to Nokkoro train on the flier I'd picked up. To his credit the guy d...

Day 4: Tokyo to Aomori

A bright and early start today as I headed off on my next adventure. Joban line at rush hour was quite pleasant, as was the ample air con. Off at Ueno and into the booking office to try and explain my itinerary to the booking person. After a bit of explaining he started tapping away at a phenominal rate on the booking computer (all the JR computers seem to be custom made with big trouch screens and a keypad on the right) and tickets started flying out of the ticket printer (itself the size of a small filing cabinet!). I was pretty impressed he'd managed to work it all out, however when he presented the tickets to me I saw that he'd taken my destination and computed an incredibly optimal route that would have me in another island within about 12 hours! I felt terrible explaining that I wanted to take the scenic route to Akita, a resort train to Aomori, and a "carpet seat" on the Hamanasu overnight sleeper to Sapporo. Once again he tapped wildly on the computer and this time everythi...

Day 3: National Train Museum

Todays item on the list was to go see the Japan National Railway Museum. And so sure enough at 10am I was heading out the door and into the sauna. Already I could feel it was going to be a scorcher. I caught the subway to Ueno and then spent a good 10 minutes scanning the JR maps for Saitmo; when you don't speak the language every station name looks pretty similar at first! Eventually found it, worked out what trains and what stations and set off on my way!

Yamanote Line was fine, and them onto the Omiya Line on a regular commuter service. Long slow trip with many many stops, but eventually got there. Back into the sauna and onto the overpriced, slow and bumpy "new shuttle" to get to the railway museum. The "new shuttle" is a sort of train that has tiny little short carriages and runs on rubber tyres on a concrete "track". Their one saving grace were large refrigerator-sized air conditioning units in each carriage.

The "new sh...

Day 2 - Akihabara and Ueno

There are two quirks to this traditional-Japanese-style room: one is that the doors are literally paper thin, so when people clonk around in the morning you know! And secondly, with the only window being at floor hight and opening onto a concrete wall 6 inches away, there is no natural light and it's pretty easy to not know what time it is. However, I slept very nicely and woke up ready for a day of exploring this amazing city.

Which is a good point… as a big city loather, I actually really like Tokyo. There is an amazing lack of cars; pedestrians, bikes and of course trains really rule this city. The cyclists are fun to watch; most of the time they're very pretty girls in their late-teens-early-twenties, riding "old" bikes (I find it hard to believe so many old bikes survived this long!) with bells and big baskets and no helmets and seemingly little regard for the traffic. They all have big chrome mud guards, and at first glance are never locked, second glance shows...

Michael Adams and the Land of the Long White Train

As the doors opened on a rush hour Yamanote line commuter train I wondered just what on earth I was doing. Obediently the queue of people waiting to board parted and a sea of commuters excited the train. Those who were in the way held on tight and appeared to almost flap in the current, images of sea weed came to mind. Then it was our turn to board, only there was no room left. Never mind, everyone just poured in anyway and somehow miraculously there was room. The guys nearest the door braced themselves on the roof and pushed back so the doors would actually close.

So here I am, Michael Adams, in the most populated city in the world. Amazing. Michael Adams in the middle of a foreign country that speaks a completely different language! In a country where trains run on time, to the second.

My journey started several weeks ago when I fairly impulsively purchased a $900 return airfare to Japan, with the intention of meeting severa...