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Day 11 - Tokushima and Awa Odori

My hopes of a nice long sleep were cut short as we had to make it to the train station in Tokushima by 9:30am. This meant an hour drive, plus breakfast time, and Anna had to iron her komono. Anna's apartment is in a pretty quiet little town called Anan. Here is her somewhat imfamous garden and the neighbour's rice field.

 

Turns out ironing a komono for the first time is fairly involved and we were a bit late making it to the train station. Already Tokushima was bustling and there was no sign of Teri, another friend from Christchurch who had ventured over to Japan to volunteer around the Fukushima area, specifically looking after children who had been living within the evacuation zone.

We eventually found Teri, or rather she found us, and we set off to do some sight seeing in the tiny amount of time we had. The only thing that we could really fit in was a trip to the whirl pools that inhabit the straight between Honshu an...

Day 10: Osaka to Tokushima and Awa Odori

Checked out of the hotel and discovered that what had taken 30 minutes to hunt down the previous night was only a 30 second walk from the railway station; if only the hotel had bothered to provide directions! Caught a local train (a "thunderbird") from Shin-Osaka to Osaka itself. Quite often the main station of a town isn't suitable for the Shinkansen (it might not be a "through" station, or might not be possible to build the line elevated, etc) so you end up with "Shin-" stations on the outskirts of town. Osaka station itself is massive and extremely complicated to find your way around. There is a north and south tower and sometimes things will be on floor "B1F". I was ravenous and wanted something to munch, but could only find ponsy cafes. Eventually I found a food directory and the only place that wasn't going to cost the earth was Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Had to laugh at that. Ordered three yummy looking doughnuts and went to find a table only there were none, so ended up sittin...

Day 9: Tokyo to Osaka

Todays mission was to get to Osaka for the night, however my train didn't leave till later in the day so I decided to visit Akahabara another time. I'd had the brain wave a couple of days earlier that there might be some model train shops there, and sure enough there wasn't just one, but dozens and dozens. So I headed off there with a rough map and started visiting shops. The shops I visited were all pretty good, albeit hard to find. A typica address might be: "6-14-2 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku, Sakai, Suehiro Bldg 3F" or another shop in a completely different part of Akihabara might be "3-15-7 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku, Asano Bldg 2F". You'll notice the road name is always the same, and the address is 3 different numbers…!??!? I still haven't been able to suss this out, and so without a decent map I have no hope of finding anyting in Akihabara!

However I did manage to visit 3 different shops, all with different methods of conducting a sale. One shop had everything in cardb...

Day 8: Sapporo to Tokyo

Last day here in Hokkaido, and it consisted mostly of trains, starting with a subway train to the central station, then a Furico train to Onema Koen. Turns out the Furico is actually a tilting train, which explains why it was so fast and smooth. Passed some great scenery as we ran along the coast.

At Onema Koen I hopped out and left the delightful little station. Onema Koen means Lake Onema (although koen actually means park) and it is definitely one of the highlights in Hokkaido, my decision to stop there being aided in no small part by the train stopping right next to it. I wasn't quite sure what to expect but soon weeded through all the street vendors and car parking and found the lake itself. Wow!

Onema Koen consists of the lake itself, and dozens of little islands. There is a great wee walkway that goes from island to island connected by little bridges. Some of the smaller "inner la...

Day 7: Sapporo to Otaru

A fairly slow start to the day, followed by a visit to the internet cafe to reserve a room for the night as the hotel had said they were full. However I reserved a room back there for that night, so they can't have been full. I don't understand either. My hour of wifi usage cost me 400 yen, ($6) a rediculous amount considering I wasn't even using one of their computers! Never mind, it was a beautiful sunny day and I hopped on a local train to Otaru and zipped off. Here is the only map of Hokkaido I have. Sapporo is the big 01 . Asahikawa where I've been on a few trips is in the middle of the island, and Biei and Furano are below that. Otaru is the complete opposite direction and lies along the coast.

It's only a short 30 minute journey there. We zipped along and I saw some of the sleeper trains waiting to be cleaned, and a big JR yard with lots of different colourful trains out sunbathing. Then we rounded a corner and there was the sea! Everyone was very exc...

Day 6: Sapporo to Asahidake

Bit of a sleep in this morning to try and stay ahead of the slight cough I've picked up; it appeared to work and I felt a lot better. 10am and I was off on another adventure. First stop was the river to watch the fish for a bit. My goodness they're big! And they move like 10,000 ton submarines too: slowly and ominously.

Note the size of the leaf floating past…

Down to the station again and snapped a picture of a Furico 283 ; JR Hokkaido seem to give most of their flagship trains quite cool names, and usually in "romanji", i.e. romanisced Japanese.

I was actually on a Super Kamui (ka-mu-i) again, and as usual it was a very quick, quiet and smooth ride. At Asahikawa I did a good job of working out where to wait for my bus and it soon arrived and all five of us filed on. I was a bit confused why no one paid and when I hesitated the driver smiled and waved me on. Well, if he i...

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...