For those who haven't noticed already...
Nov. 19th, 2002 09:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shirenomadI am back; I've just been taking a breather and catching up on things before filling you all in. Time to do that. Due to the length, I think I'll chop this up into four bite-sized updates. First one...
I don't think I've described the Japanese rail system before. One of the convenient things is that, save for express and special-service trains and reserved seats, tickets are "non-specific." This means you buy a ticket that says, in our case for instance, "from Ootsuki to Hiroshima"... and then you can take whatever trains you like so long as you start in Ootsuki and end up in Hiroshima. Once you've entered the train station, they don't check your ticket again until you leave another station, so you could bail your train for an hour break in some random station on the way and wait for the next to come along, or switch trains multiple times, or head in the opposite direction from your destination for a bit just to watch scenery out the window. They don't care. They just won't let you out of the station at point X if your ticket says you were supposed to go to point Y... not without paying an additional fee for the trip from X to Y, that is. This is actually kinda nice if you get lost or miss your stop; just get off the wrong train, check the maps or the info desk, see which one will get you on the right track again, and board it without paying one yen more.
We didn't get a chance to take full advantage of that feature on the way there, because we had paid extra for reserve seats on a particular Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo Station to Hiroshima, and therefore did not want to be leisurely about getting to Tokyo and risk missing that particular train. (If we'd missed it, we were still guaranteed a trip to Hiroshima... we'd just have to slug it out for five non-reserved seats on the next train. We didn't feel like doing that.) On the way back, though, the Shinkansen came first and was followed by the "any old route back to Ootsuki" leg of the trip, so we could afford to take a couple breaks to grab food, use the facilities, and stretch our legs.
Incidentally, although the train stations around Tsuru aren't much bigger than the ones at Disneyland, some of the ones in Tokyo are a bit larger: average stop has five or six lines running through it. And then there's the BIG stations -- Tokyo Station, Shinjuku, etc., along with some of the main stations in other cities -- which I swear rival some international airports in size. Most of these seem to have built in mini-malls; I actually picked up some manga in a bookstore in Hiroshima Station before we went home (wasn't even marked up).
More tomorrow. Same LJ time, same LJ channel!
I don't think I've described the Japanese rail system before. One of the convenient things is that, save for express and special-service trains and reserved seats, tickets are "non-specific." This means you buy a ticket that says, in our case for instance, "from Ootsuki to Hiroshima"... and then you can take whatever trains you like so long as you start in Ootsuki and end up in Hiroshima. Once you've entered the train station, they don't check your ticket again until you leave another station, so you could bail your train for an hour break in some random station on the way and wait for the next to come along, or switch trains multiple times, or head in the opposite direction from your destination for a bit just to watch scenery out the window. They don't care. They just won't let you out of the station at point X if your ticket says you were supposed to go to point Y... not without paying an additional fee for the trip from X to Y, that is. This is actually kinda nice if you get lost or miss your stop; just get off the wrong train, check the maps or the info desk, see which one will get you on the right track again, and board it without paying one yen more.
We didn't get a chance to take full advantage of that feature on the way there, because we had paid extra for reserve seats on a particular Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo Station to Hiroshima, and therefore did not want to be leisurely about getting to Tokyo and risk missing that particular train. (If we'd missed it, we were still guaranteed a trip to Hiroshima... we'd just have to slug it out for five non-reserved seats on the next train. We didn't feel like doing that.) On the way back, though, the Shinkansen came first and was followed by the "any old route back to Ootsuki" leg of the trip, so we could afford to take a couple breaks to grab food, use the facilities, and stretch our legs.
Incidentally, although the train stations around Tsuru aren't much bigger than the ones at Disneyland, some of the ones in Tokyo are a bit larger: average stop has five or six lines running through it. And then there's the BIG stations -- Tokyo Station, Shinjuku, etc., along with some of the main stations in other cities -- which I swear rival some international airports in size. Most of these seem to have built in mini-malls; I actually picked up some manga in a bookstore in Hiroshima Station before we went home (wasn't even marked up).
More tomorrow. Same LJ time, same LJ channel!
