If you are going to cross the length and breadth of a country using only local trains in continuous twenty-hour stretches, it might be much to your appreciation when those trains actually work. That was perhaps why it was so feasible to explore Japan in that manner these last two weeks: with only minor exceptions, as above, every train arrived and departed at exactly the moment it was scheduled to. All the legends are true.
The legends do have omissions. One most readily notices the tendency for trains to have the heating turned up to temperatures comparable with the outer layers of the sun, even when it is not actually cold outside; this too may render the air less than breathable. But in honesty, after a decade and a half enduring the horrors of the
British equivalents, traversing Japan like this was a luxury by comparison.
My travelling companion and I embarked from Tokyo on Christmas Day, and arrived the following morning in Hiroshima. Over the coming weeks I will post some impressions from the journey, beginning with the "City of Peace" renowned for its subjection to one of the least peaceful moments in the history of our kind; then progressing to monkeys and New Year celebrations in the snows of Nagano, and finally the heritage and stunning natural beauty of Nikko. Click the expander below for how it began.
