Taking the slow train...

...Or, my journey to Kyoto and back.
***WARNING: VERY LONG POST!!!***

Over Christmas I didn't have the money to go home or travel abroad like everybody else... Which is, I suppose, a blessing as so many people I know ended up going to Thailand, and getting stuck in the middle of the worst natural disaster in decades.

So, I decided that the best plan would be to see some of the country I have been living in for the last few months. I mean, Hokkaido is wonderful, but the problem is that it is not truly representative of the rest of Japan. The island and the mainland (as they are referred to here) tend to be quite different. Hokkaido is not REALLY Japan, more of an adjunct to Japan. As Kajsa said yesterday, it could be Canada, albeit a part of Canada that has a lot of Japanese people. So I felt it was important to actually see more of mainland Japan than the three jetlagged days I spent in Tokyo during orientation.

So I decided to get a seishun-juhachi kippu ("youth 18 ticket") which is basically an open ticket that can be used on 5 different days and allows unlimited use of the local trains for only ichiman. Yup, you guessed it; I had contrived to travel the length of Japan on local trains. Of course, I still had to get to the mainland...


day1: December 24.

I woke up early, so that I could make the early train to obihiro... I still had to schlep up the hill to school to go and pay my rent... Yeah, Mr Kohi has been a little anal about it since the time I was sick and was 2 days late with the rent. Mr Kohi strikes me, generally, as being a little bit too tightly wound. I mean more than the general population. Anyway, I pad my rent and then traipsed down the hill past, like, a million students, all of whom looked rather confused that I was heading AWAY from school. Of course, I had to say "good morning" to ALL of them, which got a bit boring after the half-million mark. But it kind of put me in a good mood, so I toddled off over the slippery slidey snow towards the station.

At the station, I was waiting for the train to arrive when I was accosted by (and I don't use this term lightly) a weirdo. He must have been about 20's, short and squat, and dressed like a Bon Jovi reject. He was really happy to see me and expressed enthusiasm over my liking coffee, the colour green, and smiling. Over the course of the train ride to Obihiro (yes, he sat next to me), he played ringtones on his phone for me, wanted to talk about Eric Clapton and slide guitar, told me how much he likes ganja and generally babbled on about intensely disconnected subjects for half an hour. It was sweet, I suppose, that he made the effort and wanted to practice his English... But still, it was a bit much...

anyway, in Obihiro I rushed off to the ticket office and organised limited express tickets through Hakodate to Hachinohe (that is, down the bottom of Sapporo and under the sea to the top of the mainland. I learned a few things over the course of the six hours of that trip, namely:

• If you ask for a window seat you'll get it, even if the ticket seller knows absolutely no English!
• Little old ladies like to have conversations with you, even if neither of you are actually speaking much of the same language.
• Minami- Chitose station is possibly the most boring station to have to spend an entire hour in, and their toilets smell weird.
• Chilled cocoa is not the same as chocolate milk.
• Halfway through the trip the train changes direction, and seats on Japanese trains always go in the direction of travel... So everybody gets up and swivels their seats around. Without an announcement.

Anyway... I got to Hachinohe at around 6 pm, although it felt later than that because of the pitch-blackness that had duly plopped out of the sky at 4pm. It was at that point that it was time... To start catching local trains. I figured I could get as far as Sendai before last trains (at midnight). Okay. Time for a bit of background: I had prepared for this trip. I went to the Hyperdia website and figured out all the (local) trains I would need to take in order to get from Hachinohe to Kyoto, and then downloaded all of their timetables (probably about 25 in all), reduced them, and stuck them into a little travel booklet I made up specially. I then figured out (on the ride to Hachinohe) which trains to catch and when/how to connect. I had a plan. Which kind of skidded at the first turn. You see, the train I had to catch from Hachinohe to Morioka was a local train; it just wasn't a JR local train. So after much negotiation with the train station dude, I bought a nisenroppyaku-en (2600 yen) ticket and took the 19h11 train to Morioka (96 mins).

So, Morioka was at least a little more interesting than Hachinohe. Which was good as I had an hour to wait for the next train. So I got myself a cappuccino and went to the waiting room to sit out the wait. The waiting room was a little freaky to say the least. There were about 20 different TV screens on one wall, all with the sound turned down. I tried to watch "serendipity" but it was actually worse without dialogue. Why is it that people in romantic comedies are supposed to look desperate and slightly insane?

Anyway, I got a bit tired of that and wandered off in search of a toilet. I couldn't find one so I figured I’d go sit on the train. Good plan, because with 20 minutes till the departure time the train was already packed. I guess you could call it "last train japanic". People ended up squeezed in there so tightly sardines would have complained. Claustrophobia beckoned, so I turned my Ipod up loud, played "disco kandi" and tried not to breathe. Eventually the crowd thinned out a bit and I could sit down, but there was this extremely dodge old dude hanging from a strap in front of me with his hand in his pocket. Said hand was suspiciously active. I’m hoping he was just itchy. I tried hard to disassociate. Anyway, the train left Morioka at 21h57 and arrived at Ichinoseki at 23h25. I realised that I would not be getting to Sendai that evening. Unless I walked.

So, my options were:

• stay in the station until 5 am when the first trains started running, or
• Try and find a hotel.

Guess which one I chose. Listen, I’m a delicate flower of womanhood and roughing it in a station is above and beyond the call, really. So I found a cheapish (but nice) place by the station (the hotels are always by the station), and got some well-needed rest.

day2: December 25.

I got up and checked out of the hotel, and decided to take a walk around Ichinoseki. Let me tell you: this was not such a good idea. Ichinoseki falls into that category of towns known as armpits- a bit smelly and not much of interest. Oh, I lie, there was a Lawson’s... one of the last Lawson’s I’d see on the mainland actually (they're more into the am/pm's and Seikomarts there). I ended up buying a genki-drink and a nori roll and going to the station to eat and read my book. The locals seemed amazed at my willingness to eat the nori. Really I don't understand this. People, it was tuna in rice with seaweed wrapping. This is not that adventurous, it wasn't even wet seaweed, and it was the dry crispy salty kind. (Yum).

The train to Sendai left at 10h48. As I was boarding the train (early, so I could get a good seat) I noticed a very eccentric-looking older Japanese gentleman. He had a rather large trolley case with Russian airline stickers (well, I assume they were Russian as they were in Cyrillic). He plopped his bags on the seat and went off to the vending machines. I eyed his bags rather nervously as I was a bit worried that he might be a terrorist, leaving his bombs on random trains (all those japanicky warning stickers were taking their toll), but he came back just as the train was about to pull out.

Ichinoseki-sendai (10h48, 105 mins)
the train ride was a bit more boring than most... lots of fields and mechanics / scrap shops. Oh and some particularly annoying teenage boys that were giggling and play fighting. And attempting to look cool at the same time. Tiresome to say the least.

My day was a flurry of train rides and connections, stations, Mr. Donuts, coffee and a marked lack of real nutrition.

Sendai- Fukushima (13h04, 73 mins)
I kept seeing that eccentric guy. He was obviously going the same way that I was. I would have spoken to him except that he kept falling asleep. Definitely a nonconformist though, he took his shoes off and rested his feet on the opposite seat.

Fukushima- Kuroiso (15h04, 137 mins)
the Mr. Donut here is not self- service. I managed in Nihongo right up until the end when she asked me something about my coffee. I didn't understand and felt a right tool. I then discovered that pon de lion has many donut friends including a sheep: French wooler--- the French cruller. Oh the wittiness of the punnage. Too much coffee and sugar at this point but damned if I was eating any more ramen.

Kuroiso- utsonomiya (17h48, 49 mins)
the old guy had decided that I’m interesting. It turns out that he's a translator and speaks multiple languages including Romany, Russian, Spanish and Greek. He also insisted that I could take express trains with my kippu, as they never check tickets and all the trains come out the same exit. He was very helpful but the whole conversation was disconcerting: he kept insisting that he hated Japanese people. I wasn't sure how to respond. Also he kept talking about the secret police. There’s a secret police? There isn't even enough crime for the real police, really. Now, what they really need here are the fashion police. I swear if I had a dollar for every girl in "fuckme boots" and a pelmet miniskirt with no stockings, I’d be a millionaire. I mean it's not as if it's not the middle of winter and the average temp is below freezing.

But I digress.

Utsonomiya- ueno (18h40, 90 mins)
losing mind. Definitely losing mind.

Ueno-Tokyo (20h13, 8 mins)
ueno is the world's stupidest train station. It appears to have been designed by dwarves on acid.

tokyo-atami (21h03, 113 mins)
too many people! Tokyo station is just insane. I just wanted something to eat, and guess what? Ramen restaurants. Oh, yeah there was some nihon-riyori and sushi but vastly overpriced. I ended up getting a spicy hot dog from doutor coffee. What is a doutor anyway? And then on to the next train. my balance was starting to get a bit floopy at this point; I was feeling dizzy pretty much all the time and was amazingly tired, considering I’d spent the whole day sitting...,

day3: 27 December.
Atami-ogaki (01h24, 329 mins) **night train**
waiting in atami station was horrible. Absolutely horrible. It was cold, there was nowhere to sit, it was cold, all the vending machines were outside, and it was cold. Then I got on the incredibly overcrowded night train, where all the unreserved seats were smoking seats, and I realised what true suffering meant. I kept falling asleep and then jerking awake as my lungs shut down in protest. At the first available opportunity (i.e. one of the longer stops) I snuck into the reserved seating section and fell asleep. The conductor came past a few times but never asked for my ticket. I figure either he thought I looked like I belonged, or he'd already marked the seat as occupied, and the original occupant had gotten off. Whatever. It was a lot more comfy.

Ogaki-maibara (06h58, 36 mins)
the end was in sight. I was within spitting distance of Kyoto. I was also about to go insane and pummel JR staff to within an inch of their life. Amazingly, I managed not to commit homicide. Even though there were 800 annoying teenagers on the crowded train. On a Sunday morning. At 2 minutes to seven. Surely they should have been at home, sleeping?

Maibara-Kyoto (07h49, 55 mins)
I had now passed through the barrier of tiredness and was feeling genki, albeit in a rather surreal fashion. I ended up sitting next to a gaijin, who turned out to be a Californian called nick, who dragged me off to the tourist centre at Kyoto station, and showing me all the places I should go, and how to get there. This was extremely beneficial, as I probably would have wandered around like a lost fart, and would never even have found the tourist centre.

***** to be continued....*****