There are many options to fly from the UK to Japan. Having asked around, Virgin Atlantic seemed to be the best in this kind of business. However, for a 6’ 4’’ guy like myself, economy class is still tight. The legroom is little and the seat has just enough width to accommodate the body size that comes with a guy of this size. The flipside of the coin is that you get an amazing entertainment system with more films, TV shows, games and what-have-you than you could possibly indulge in during the 12-hour flight, you get excellent in-flight service, great food and a never-ending supply of bottled water, which is really a blessing for trips like this. So, overall, although my legs and my back complained during the flight, I have nothing to complain about.
And in any case, you also get views like this:
About five or six hours away from Japan, while flying over Siberia, we could see the sun setting over the North Pole, as we were headed south-east. Quite an amazing sight…
We landed at Narita promptly at 9:00 the next day. I have to admit I didn’t manage, nor did I try, to get much sleep on the plane. I don’t know if it was the lack of space, my own excitement or just the temptation of the in-flight entertainment system – probably a good mix of all the above. Our journey was not nearly finished yet, as the plan was to go straight to Kyoto on that day, around 475km west of Tokyo by rail, as we would spend there the first six days of our stay and use it as a base for all sorts of shorter trips in the western part of Honshu island, which is the middle and biggest of the islands that comprise Japan.
So, after going through Immigration Control and the huge luggage collection hall, we headed straight for the underground Japan Railways ticket offices to exchange our pre-bought
You can get a pass valid for a week, two weeks or more and use it instead of a ticket for most of the trains you’ll ever get to use while there. The exceptions, where different rates and/or extra charges apply, are the ultra fast Nozomi service of the bullet train and the local train services which are offered by local operators and not JR. And trust me, the train gets you literally everywhere in
And now follows an account of my first encounter with Japanese culture. I and my friend walk into the ticket office, dragging our luggage and probably looking slightly worried as to whether we’re in the right place. A rather energetic man, probably in his early 60s, jumps off his chair and welcomes us in perfect English. We take a seat in front of his desk, he takes our vouchers and starts preparing the Rail Passes for us. In the meantime, his supervisor, a young lady in her early 30s, who happens to be not busy with another customer, comes over to our desk and when the chap tells her that we intend to use our one-week passes on this day, she asks politely where we are intending to travel. She then immediately offers to reserve seats and tickets for us, both for the service from Narita to Shinagawa station in Tokyo (better to change there for the Shinkansen rather than in Central Tokyo, because ‘you’ll find it easier to find your way around the station’) and then for the Hikari bullet train, the second fastest service after the Nozomi, from Shinagawa to Kyoto. Before we had the chance to realise that in less than two minutes what we initially thought was going to be a long and tedious procedure was almost complete and that two people were working in tandem for us, the lady provides us with the tickets and checks with us that we have understood clearly the times that the trains will be departing and arriving. And as we lift our heads from the desk where we were examining the tickets, the man literally shoots off from his chair across the room and picks up a tourist map and a brochure listing all the sights of Kyoto, both in English, and hands them over to us, as before with the Rail Passes, with both hands and with a little bow to thank us for being there and giving him the chance to serve us (which is the etiquette with customers in any shop or restaurant in Japan!). We exit the ticket office, with all documents in hand and with time to spare before catching the Narita Express train to
One could easily say at this point that it’s too soon to make such a judgement and that there are plenty of other countries in the world with polite and hospitable people, in fact I know for sure that a lot of my Greek readers will say that about Greece (although, deep inside they know that this is not generally true anymore…). I also know how famous England and the UK are around the world for the politeness and the manners of their people. Well, none of them and of the many other peoples and cultures I’ve seen and interacted with in my lifetime come even close to my experience in Japan. I say that not just because of the incident I just described, of course. Retrospectively, and having spent almost two full weeks there, in terms of professionalism, politeness, good manners, willingness to help and plain and simple efficiency, the Japanese people are right up there, on the top of my list. And they have my total respect for that.
The train ride on the Narita Express wasn’t generally as fast as the name might suggest. Quite a few stops had to be made in various stations at the outskirts of Tokyo, so the journey to Shinagawa Station took us about 80 minutes. From there, we headed straight to the Shinkansen platforms, following clearly signposted routes in the busy station. This is the first time I noticed that every single sign in a train station is clearly labelled in both Japanese and English. In the days that followed I realised that this is true even in the most remote local station. This is of significant importance for someone like me who has no clue of kanji, hiragana or katakana, in other words the various forms of writing in Japanese.
Now it was time to meet the Shinkansen. For a train to be called a “bullet train”, it’d better have the looks of one too! Here is one of my snaps of the Nozomi N700 series:
But as we couldn’t ride the Nozomi with our Rail Passes, without paying extra charges, we had to wait a few more minutes for this Hikari 300 series:
The time when we boarded was 12:08. The time when we left was 12:10, as advertised. The time when we arrived at Kyoto was 14:48, again as advertised. For the first 20-30 minutes of this journey, my friend and I hardly exchanged any words, I seem to remember. I don’t think, in fact I know, this was because we were just getting too tired at that stage. It was because this was the most unbelievable feeling of a train ride! As the train left Shinagawa station and slowly started accelerating, we could already see that trees and houses and other objects out of the window were moving faster and faster. And then at some point, maybe a couple of miles down the track, while the train was already speeding, we felt a sudden jolt, and then it really started to accelerate! From a train moving at that speed, I’d have expected a lot more noise in the carriage. However, the outside noise was completely dampened, I could hardly feel the wheels spinning on the tracks and the whole ride felt like a smooth slide. I really can’t imagine how a proper maglev train would feel! The only other super-fast train I’ve been on before is the Eurostar, which is also particularly fast when it crosses the north-western plains of France on its way to Paris. Compared to the Shinkansen experience, it still feels like a pretty ordinary train.
Enjoying the train ride in relative silence for a while also gave me the opportunity to appreciate something else: the landscape. Where there is no town or city, there is by default a forest-covered hill or mountain. Everything is covered in thick patches of tropical green – quite a different sight in my eyes, comparing it to the green grassy hills of the southern counties in England.
We arrived in Kyoto and after getting a bite in one of the many restaurants of the main station, we headed to our hotel, relieved that we were about to get some rest. The whole journey, door-to-door, took a good 23 hours. With hardly any sleep in between but with plenty of excitement about the days that would follow, I settled in my room and closed my eyes at 17:00.
The best was yet to come...
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