Nozomi Lake

Day trip to Japanese Countryside

Day trip to Japanese Countryside in the Nara Prefecture.

Update: I've made a little map of our walk:

By train through the mountains of Japan from Tokyo to west coast

A one day trip in April 2014.

From Tokyo (Asakusa Tobu Station) by the Tobu Limited Express to Shinugawa Onsen, two hours at speed.

Then an hour and a half on narrow gauge rail, by a wondrous two car local train (with flower pot in front window at the front and a team of happy retired locals gently sipping beer in the club car behind) on the Tobu Kinagawa Line, the Yagan-Tetsudo Line and the Aizu Railway line to arrive at...
Yunokamionsen, the only station in Japan with a straw thatched roof.. and since 2013, a foot onsen (hot spring bath), a grand amenity.
The movie shows the extent of tunnelling and bridges on this essentially local narrow gauge railway... it's not only a delight to travel this route and look out the window, but also amazing admiring the technical aspects of the line, built of course in a country prone to earthquakes.

We had one day to get away from Tokyo for a day trip and I looked at for possible ways home, rather than just going back the same way. Apart from south, the other way on this single track line was north, to Aizuwakamatsu, and from there the obvious other route was east to find the Tohoku Shinkansen and get swiftly back to the city.

I then looked more carefully at maps and stations in the wild and discovered the Banetsu line running west towards Niigata on the west coast... could we indeed get to the west coast?

I then found this collection of movies of the Banetsu.:


Could we then get home to Tokyo?

So it went like this:
We took the 12.30pm out of Yunokamionsen (an hour there was enough for a green tea soft serve and a foot bath) for Aizuwakamatsu, an absolutely slow slow local, one car, see how it's painted in the movie, still with Japanese-plush-quality toilet, gurgling along for 53 minutes where the ordinary local would take 36 minutes. There was not a lot to do in Aizuwakamatsu, but it was interesting to walk a little in an entirely Japanese town... on this whole trip we saw no non-Japanese, heard nothing but Japanese.
We joined the other two dozen passengers to hasten for the doors of the 14.33 Banetsu train for Niitsu, climbing to share the two carriages 15 minutes before departure. Everybody boards smartly by ingrained habit in Japan, the train does not wait for you.
In the movie you see the extent of mountain and river along the way, rivers widening as we approached the coast, also cherry trees in bloom whereas in the mountains trees were still bare. At Niitsu we hurried with the crowd up and over to another platform, for a 19 minute ride to the city of Niigata on the west coast on an altogether more businesslike train.
Google maps had kept throwing up at me when I studied Niigata an 'Italian' restaurant called Piatto Giorno (dish of the day in Italian). A Japanese friend had rung them to ask if they could meet a complex dietary need for us. Indeed they would we said.
We walked a pleasant 20 minutes to find Piatto Giorno. As we approached the tiny restaurant (most restaurants in Japan are small and special) the chef-owner, wife and two tiny children rushed to meet us. The meal was excellent. They ordered us a taxi, the taxi we paid with the Tokyo train card, Suica, and we caught the 20.19 Max Toki Shinkansen which whisked us home in comfort and steadiness though the mountains to Tokyo. I could type notes on the trip on tiny keyboard and iPad Mini, the man beside me wrote up his business spreadsheet with no sense of shake or rattle. Niigata-Ueno (Tokyo), 330.3km in 2 hours 3 minutes. For the day, almost 750km. Arriving home fresh. Precise times? On the main Shnkansen line, Tokyo-Osaka there are 323 trains a day travelling at 270km/hr, annual average delay 0.6 minutes. Even for first (Green) class, you line up.

The trains from Asakusa to Aizuwakamatsu are private, paid fare, about $100 each including seat reservation on the Tobu express . Aizuwakamatsu-Niigata-Ueno including Shinkansen seat reservation all covered by Japan Rail Pass, as these are Japan Rail trains.

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