Trains Archives - 4corners7seas

Hozukyo Station

From this distance the train appears to be suspended in the air across the valley, high above the river and motionless with its lights standing out like beacons against the backdrop of brooding forest in the deepening gloom. The tinny sounds of station announcements and departure chimes waft over on the breeze, and then the train slowly starts moving again, sliding horizontally through the air and accelerating out of sight into the mountainside, leaving behind the bridge it was standing on.

Hozukyo Station must be the coolest train station I’ve ever seen. It occupies the entire span of a bridge over the Katsura River in the mountains which form the western border of Kyoto (halfway between the city’s popular Arashiyama district and the town of Kameoka on the other side of the divide), with tunnels through the mountains directly at each end of the bridge. Why they even put a station there, I have no idea – there’s nothing there, no town or village, just a small parking area and the road along along the Katsura valley. It’s not even considered necessary to man the station, so few passengers does it see. It just seemingly floats there above the river, the express trains thundering straight over, the local services stopping for a minute to the great benefit of the occasional hiker and pretty much nobody else.

When you actually enter the station you stand there on the platform right next to the tracks, just a couple of feet from the passing trains – there can’t be many places in the world where you can stand on a rail bridge while trains are crossing it at full speed. From the platforms you also have a good angle to see along the tunnel into the depths of the mountain, see the glow from the headlights of the approaching train before it comes into view and hear the ominous rumble of the engine building towards you. And then here it is, bursting out of the rock face and blasting past you with a rush of air, the bridge shaking and rattling as it rumbles past, and then just as quickly it’s gone again. A few minutes later the local train emerges from the tunnel, slowing down to pick you up and take you back to Kyoto.

Hozukyo Station makes it possible to do a great hike along the Kiyotaki and Katsura river valleys, starting from the village of Takao (reached by bus from Kyoto Station or Nijo Station) where you can visit Jingo-ji Temple and throw your bad karma away on discs down into the valley, then through the pretty riverside village of Kiyotaki at the foot of Mt Atago (Kyoto’s highest), and along the river to finish at the station.

This mostly follows the Kyoto Isshu Trail’s Kitayama & Nishiyama courses which you can read about in detail here, leaving the Nishiyama Course at trail board 5-1 where you cross this bridge (rather than turning up the hill):

Once over the bridge you just follow that road all the way to Hozukyo Station (on the way you pass Torokko Hozukyo Station on the other side of a footbridge over the river – this is on the Sagano Line, a seasonal sightseeing train)

Have you been here? Any questions about it? Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.

Related Links

Search accommodation in Kyoto here

See my hiking in Kyoto & hiking in Tokyo pages and the excellent Hiking in Japan & Ridgeline Images blogs for further inspiration; if you’re also heading to Korea or Taiwan, check out my pages on hiking in Seoul and hiking in Taipei

Make sure you have a good insurance policy; World Nomads offer flexible travel insurance you can buy even if already overseas – most travel insurance companies won’t cover you if you’ve already left your country, and this can be a crucial point as I once found out the hard way in Thailand

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For more posts on Japan see here, and check out my quick guide to Kyoto

For my Japan snowboarding guide, click here

For my Japan overland travel guide, click here

This page contains affiliate links i.e. if you use the links to World Nomads or Hotels Combined and purchase insurance or accommodation, 4corners7seas will receive a commission from them – this commission comes out of their profit margin at no extra cost to you. I’m recommending them because I know and trust them from personal use; thank you in advance should you choose to use my links!

Life in Beijing: catching the bullet train

Beijing, China, Overland travel, Trains

You’re woken up by the sound of an old man violently expectorating in the hutong alleyway outside, cringing during the pause while he holds his mouthful of phlegm for a second or two between noisily bringing it up and noisily depositing it on the floor with typically exaggerated sound effects. Then (after the usual faffing around waiting to get your 100 yuan key deposit back upon check out) there comes a sardine-tin subway ride, the hordes pushing & shoving their way into the carriages before those inside have been able to get off, a veritable rugby scrum of inconsideration; those alighting scowl and mutter their anger towards the phalanx of morons pushing their way on at each station, yet they did the same when they boarded.

Subway ride dealt with, next up comes the joy of clearing the airport-style security at the railway station. Tickets & IDs must be shown to the guards at the entrance, and all bags must go through the scanners; the line is long, and it’s full of people hellbent on pushing their way through in front of whoever they can get in front of. No matter that it makes no difference whatsoever and the train doesn’t leave any earlier if you get into the station a few minutes faster; everybody still wants to get in there a few minutes faster.

Finally, you attain the air conditioned sanctuary of the departures area, a vast aircraft hangar-like space with seats and elbow room and coffee and noodles. Riding China’s bullet train system isn’t exactly the most user-friendly experience, but they definitely did a good job with the engineering side of things; the trains are sleek, fast, and comfortable, and the gargantuan stations are something else.

Then comes boarding time, and your gate’s escalators are opened for everyone to descend to the platform; another ridiculous crush takes shape as a mass of people hurry to get through first, for no reason whatsoever. Simmer down, you think; the departure time is fixed, we all have a seat, and our seats are pre-determined. No reason to rush.

Well, no reason that is, unless you’re one of the hopeless nicotine addicts who simply must power through one last cigarette before being locked inside a no-smoking train for an hour or two until the next station.

Smog through the bullet train window in the vicinity of Shijiazhuang — View from a high speed rail station somewhere in Hebei province

There are many such individuals ignoring the no smoking signs (and the pleas of the staff), so you descend the escalator into a fug of cigarette smoke mixing with the PM2.5; the pollution’s so thick you can see it in the air, with even just the far ends of the platforms looking hazy. The cigarettes stink, but they probably don’t make much difference given the filth you’re already breathing; should’ve kept your mask handy but it’s crammed down in your bag somewhere. At every station the train stops at along the way, all these smokers will gather by the doors as the train pulls in, cigarettes already in mouths, lighters already in hands, to leap out and furiously inhale as much tar as they can in 30 seconds before the train attendants yell at them to get back onboard; the platform is strewn with half-smoked cigarettes and they all pile back in. So much for the stations being no smoking areas! At least the no smoking on board is strictly enforced – lengthy announcements clearly explain that it could cause a fire, and that on a train travelling at 300kph this would be disastrous.

Finally boarding the train, it’s an absolute gong show waiting for everyone to settle down. The smokers huddle at the doors, flinging their cigarette butts to the ground at the last possible moment before crushing in, while bags are still being arranged and re-arranged, shoved up on the luggage rack, taken back down to get something out, shoved back up, people competing for the ‘best’ spots on the racks; you shove your bag wherever you can and take your seat, marvelling at just how much commotion it takes for everyone to get on and sit down.

Settle down they eventually all do, though not until well after the doors have closed and the train is already pulling out through the suburbs; anyway, now you can finally relax and enjoy the scenery through the window.

But today the scenery is grim, a spectral, smog-choked land rushing by the window under a smothering blanket of airborne foulness. The views are great sometimes to be fair, but not today… this is just one of those days, one of those days when it feels like China is chewing you up and spitting you out – spitting you out with an exaggerated sound effect like a mouthful of phlegm.

—

Make sure to sign up for a VPN service before arriving in China so you can use the internet as normal – see here

For more China posts, click here

See my China overland travel guide here; book Chinese trains online here*

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Guide to Using the JR Pass

Japan, Overland travel, Tokyo Olympics, Trains

The green Hayabusa train used on the Hokkaido shinkansen

The Japan Rail Pass (or JR Pass) is a nationwide rail pass allowing you unlimited travel on trains operated by Japan Rail (with a few exceptions, see below) for a fixed number of days. It’s amazingly good value if you’re planning to cover a reasonable distance – basically any itinerary exceeding a Tokyo-Kyoto round-trip will work out cheaper using the JR Pass, potentially saving you hundreds of dollars.

If you’re visiting for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and want to get some sightseeing done while you’re in the country (e.g. by visiting Kyoto and Hiroshima in addition to Tokyo), the JR Pass is probably the way to go (see some example itineraries below).

How to Buy the JR Pass

There are two ways to buy the JR Pass – advance booking online, or in person once you’re in Japan. Doing it in advance saves you 40 to 60 dollars, you just need to make sure you do it in good time as you have to recieve a physical voucher (called an ‘exchange order’) in the mail to be exchanged for the pass once you reach Japan. Don’t order a pass the day before you fly! The passes are sold by various online sales agents, usually with free shipping (depending where you are), and usually good for delivery within 48 hours – but really it’s best to allow a week at least to be safe. Note that traditional bricks & mortar travel agents in your country may sell them too, but likely with a steeper markup.

This is what they send you in the mail, an ‘exchange order’ which you use to pick up your pass after arrival in Japan

If you fail to sort it out in time, or you didn’t realise you wanted one before you got there, you can just take your passport along to a designated sales point* and buy one over the counter for a slightly higher price (the crucial requirement remains that you entered the country on a tourist stamp or visa, and not a residency permit):

7-day passes are 29,000 purchased online or 33,000 purchased in Japan
14-day passes are 46,000 purchased online or 52,000 purchased in Japan
21-day passes are 59,000 purchased online or 65,000 purchased in Japan

So, if you’re organised and like saving 40 to 60 dollars, online is still the way to go – I’ve used the JR Pass many times and have bought them both ways. I have an affiliate partnership with Japan Rail Pass, so if you click on one of my links to their site (like this one) or one of the banners on this page and make a purchase, you save 40 dollars and I also get a bit of commission (at no extra cost to you) – it’s a win-win, so if you’ve found my site useful or interesting please consider it! I use them whenever I purchase a JR Pass online, they’ve provided great service and fast delivery every time. Click the banner to make an order or browse their site:

(*over the counter sales points are the following stations: Sapporo, Sendai, Niigata, Tokyo Station, Shinjuku, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima, Takamatsu, Hakata (Fukuoka), New Chitose Airport (Sapporo), Tokyo’s Narita & Haneda airports, and Kansai International Airport)

The red Komachi train used on the Akita shinkansen

The JR Pass: is it worth it?

Man, back when I lived in Japan how I always looked on with envy at all the tourists (including family & friends when they visited) just breezing through the Shinkansen gates, flashing their JR Passes like a wave of a wand, to be whisked away here, there, and everywhere at high speed on Japan’s iconic bullet trains. As a legal resident of the country, the JR Pass was unavailable to me at the time, a magical land of affordable super-fast transportation from which I was forbidden; a round trip from Kyoto to Tokyo alone would’ve cost me around 10% of my monthly salary as an English teacher, so how I longed for one of those passes. Had I been able to get my hands on one, I would’ve absolutely caned it!

…and so when I returned to Japan years later as a tourist, I got a JR Pass and proceeded to do exactly that! In 7 days I did:

Hakata – Shin Osaka
Shin Osaka – Kanazawa & back
Shin Osaka – Inari (Kyoto) & back (for Fushimi Inari Shrine)
Shin Osaka – Tokyo & back
Shin Osaka – Takamatsu & back (over the Great Seto Bridge)
Shin Osaka – Hakata

(I arrived & departed on the JR Beetle ferry from Korea – not covered by the pass unfortunately)

…which was ¥95,880 worth of tickets for ¥29,000. Not bad!

I was seriously going for it though – having previously lived in Osaka, Tokyo, and Kyoto, I wasn’t spending time exploring those cities, but was catching up with friends in the evenings while taking day trips to places I’d always fancied visiting but hadn’t been able to justify the expense. I went to Takamatsu literally just to see the Seto Inland Sea and go over the Great Seto Bridge, because I’m a geek and because, well, I had a JR Pass so screw it, why not?! I doubt the majority of JR Passes get thrashed quite so heavily, but you can easily get your money’s worth. Since that first one I’ve been back to Japan multiple times and used a JR Pass every time – I never did quite as much on one pass again, but I always saved money with it.

Should You Buy the JR Pass for the Tokyo Olympics?

If you’re just attending events in Tokyo and staying only in the Tokyo region, then it won’t be worth it – just pick up one of the local IC cards instead.

On the other hand if you’re planning to attend events outside Tokyo (like football in Sendai or the marathons in Sapporo) the JR Pass could be very useful – the easiest way to Sapporo is to fly, of course, but you could consider getting a JR Pass and making a trip out of it with a few stops in the Tohoku region and Hokkaido (e.g. Hakodate at the southern tip of Hokkaido, and see here for my Tohoku recommendations).

If you’re only attending events in Tokyo but want to do some sightseeing beyond the Tokyo region, then the JR Pass is the way to go (and really it does make sense to see a bit more of Japan while you’re in the country). At the very least I’d recommend visiting Kyoto and Hiroshima, you could get a 7-day pass and spend 2 nights in Hiroshima and 4 nights in Kyoto.

JR Pass Example Itineraries

Basically, if you’re doing anything much more than Tokyo – Kyoto return (26,800 yen), a JR Pass is going to be good value; 29,000 yen for the 1-week pass, and obviously the more you use it the better value it becomes. If you’re landing at Narita, you can potentially use the Narita Express to & from the airport on days 1 & 7, which comes to over 5,000 yen (though often people staying longer than 7 days will time their pass activation & usage to cover the Narita Express on either the first or final day); add a round trip to Kyoto, and you’re already saving money. Any other travel you do on top of that is more money saved.

A 1-week sample itinerary of Tokyo – Hiroshima – Kyoto – Tokyo would be 45,230 yen bought as separate tickets, so a healthy saving (plus potentially an airport transfer).

A typical 2-week route might be Tokyo to Fukuoka and back e.g. Narita – Tokyo – Osaka – Hakata (Fukuoka) – Hiroshima – Kyoto – Tokyo – Narita, which would already be 60,000 yen without including any daytrips (e.g. Nagasaki from Fukuoka, Nara from Osaka, etc). As the 2-week pass is 46,000 yen, it’s great value for this itinerary.

However, if you did either of those itineraries without returning to Tokyo i.e. fly in to Tokyo & out from Osaka/Fukuoka, then the pass would no longer be worth it.

If you’re not sure, sketch your itinerary out and total up the train ticket values using Hyperdia to see if a pass would save you anything (see here for how to use Hyperdia)

Riding the Train

Getting your pass: when you arrive in Japan, if you pre-ordered take your exchange order to the JR Pass counter at the ticket office – you can do this at Narita, Haneda and Kansai airports if you want to activate it immediately to use for your airport transfer, or if you want to activate it later head to Shinjuku or Tokyo Station (or any of the others listed at the * above). They’ll check your passport for your tourist stamp/visa and give you your pass – this is a good time to make any seat reservations you already have in mind. If you didn’t pre-order just go to the JR Pass counter with your passport and pay by cash or credit card.

Once you have the pass in hand, you’re then free to pass through the ticket barriers at any JR station at will – you can’t go through the usual ticket gates, look for the manned gate at the side where the staff will visually check your ticket and let you through (in practice, if they’re busy they barely even check, just wave the pass at them and go through. On other occasions they may actually want to take it and have a proper look at it). The first time you do this with your new pass they’re supposed to stamp it to validate it; if they’re busy and not fully paying attention, make sure they stamp it for you! (it’s not such a big deal, but may save you a confusing scene later on)

The shinkansen platforms are accessed via a separate concourse which in turn is usually accessed through a second set of barriers within the JR concourse. At some stations (especially smaller ones) you may find this isn’t the case, but most of the time you’ll be going through two sets of ticket gates to reach the shinkansen platforms so allow plenty of time to navigate the stations. These concourses are packed full of convenience stores, bento shops, and souvenir shops – bento are basically lunch boxes, and the ekiben (a portmanteau of eki, station, and bento) are really good! If you need to eat on the go, do it like a Japanese salaryman and grab yourself an ekiben to enjoy on the train. The trains usually also have food trolleys coming up & down with drinks and snacks, nothing fancy but it does the job.

Seat reservations: most shinkansen and limited express trains have both reserved seat cars and non-reserved seat cars. The non-reserved cars enable you to just rock up and get on any train going to your destination, but if it’s busy there’ll be plenty of others doing the same and you may end up standing. Therefore if you know which train you’re planning to ride you might want to make a seat reservation, you can do this at any ticket counter (not just the JR Pass counters) and it’s free of charge. There are some shinkansen and limited express trains which have no non-reserved cars and thus require mandatory seat reservations, notably the Hayabusa & Komachi (which are the fastest service heading north from Tokyo to Hokkaido & Akita respectively after separating at Morioka).

Exceptions: with the JR Pass you can ride all JR trains, with just a few exceptions. The main ones to be aware of are that you can’t ride the Nozomi or Mizuho trains on the Shinkansen system. The Nozomi is the fastest service operating between Tokyo & Fukuoka, and the Mizuho is the fastest service between Osaka and Kagoshima (the trains don’t actually go faster, they just make fewer stops and so provide a faster service from A to B). This means the fastest service you can use between Tokyo & Osaka is the Hikari, which also operates between Osaka & Fukuoka, and the fastest service you can use between Osaka & Kagoshima is the Sakura. Between Osaka & Fukuoka the Hikari and Sakura overlap; the Sakura is faster over that part of the network (and only marginally slower than the Mizuho).

In addition to those two shinkansen services, the pass doesn’t cover private cabins on night trains (it does cover the non-private cabins, but there are hardly any night trains left anyway and you’re unlikely to ride them unless you’re a train enthusiast), and also there are some JR trains which run along short sections of private railway which require you to pay a supplement. This could potentially happen without you realising, and the conductor or station staff will ask for the supplement – don’t feel they’re ripping you off or anything, it’s just how it works and the supplement isn’t usually much. In any case most rugby fans probably won’t end up on these sections; the most likely would be the limited express trains from Tokyo to Shimoda (on the Izu Peninsula) and Kyoto to Amanohashidate, or if you go to Odaiba Island in Tokyo Bay on the JR Saikyo Line from Shinjuku/Shibuya the train runs on a private line (Rinkai Line) for the last few stops which’ll cost you a few dollars.

The JR Pass really is the best way to cover a lot of ground in Japan. Next time I have one, should there be a next time, I reckon I’ll ride the Komachi Shinkansen (to Akita) and the Hokkaido Shinkansen just for the hell of it, because they’re the two coolest-looking trains on the planet (the Akita Shinkansen is red, and looks to me like the long-nosed tengu, and the Hokkaido Shinkansen is the racing green one). Don’t care if it makes me sound like an otaku (geek) – I am, and those trains are awesome! Update: since writing this post I’ve been back to Japan a whole bunch of times, and used the JR Pass for every visit (and did indeed ride the red & green trains up north!)

Any questions about the JR Pass? Give me a shout below and I’ll get back to you.

Click the banner to pre-order your JR Pass now:

For more posts on Japan, click here

For my Japan snowboarding guide, click here

Check out my guides to hiking in Kyoto and Tokyo

For my Japan overland travel guide, click here

(This page contains affiliate links i.e. if you follow the links from this page to purchase a JR pass, 4corners7seas will receive a commission from them; this commission comes out of their profit margin at no extra cost to you. I’m recommending it because it’s awesome, and if you’ve found my site useful please consider using my links – thank you in advance should you choose to do so!)

Drunk Sleeping on the Train in Japan – and Getting Stranded in the Wrong Prefecture!

Japan, Kyoto, Trains, Travel tales

The cool air wafting across my face, combined with the train’s extended lack of motion, coaxed me out of my slumber.

“Shit,” I thought, “where the hell am I?”

To which the answer was: I was drunk and jet-lagged on an empty train in the Japanese countryside, which was standing stopped with the doors open at some station apparently in the middle of nowhere. It looked very much like this station was the last stop, but exactly where this station actually was I had no idea. Looking confusedly at the time I realised I must’ve overshot Kyoto by at least an hour, and it was now after one in the morning… fuck!

Lake Biwa in Shiga prefecture: after sleeping on the train I woke up on the wrong side of it! — Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest lake. I woke up on completely the wrong side of it, with no way to get back!

I’d arrived in Japan the week before to take up a job teaching English in Kyoto, and after an absurd boot camp at my company’s regional head office in Osaka (a ‘training course’ which was more about breaking our spirits than it was about training us how to teach English) I’d started my job in Kyoto.

This had all come about because I’d had to leave Canada (unwillingly!) when my Canadian visa expired, where I’d been teaching English as a side-gig to teaching snowboarding (Vancouver is both a ski town and a popular study English abroad destination for ESL students). I’d heard this Japanese company was conducting interviews in Vancouver, and the start dates were just after I had to leave Canada so I went for the job and thus found myself back in Japan a short time later.

While teaching in Vancouver I’d made an awesome bunch of Japanese friends – students and staff from the school – who mostly lived in Osaka and Tokyo, so when I’d got the job in Kyoto we’d started making plans to hang out in Osaka (Kyoto and Osaka being located right next to each other in the Kansai region). My manager from the school (a died-in-the-wool Osakan) had always insisted that the Japanese food in Vancouver was rubbish, and like all good Osakans she saw it as her personal mission to convince anyone & everyone that Osaka has the best food in Japan. She’d sworn she’d show any of us the real deal if we were ever in Japan, and now I was, and she came good on that promise.

She invited me to a dinner party at her friend’s place in Osaka on that first weekend, and we ate an absolute feast of amazing home-cooked Japanese (and Italian) food washed down with copious volumes of quality French reds and a bottle of añejo tequila. This dinner party started at lunchtime, and I ended up boarding a midnight train back to Kyoto thoroughly pissed up, still a bit jet-lagged, and full to bursting with food. Unsurprisingly, I dozed off in pretty short order.

It’s something you see in Japan quite a lot: people totally passed out on the train, either due to alcohol or work-related exhaustion, sleeping like babies, and always going completely undisturbed. Any Japanese or long-term resident of Japan can probably tell you a story or two about waking up at the end of a line. It’s not so bad when it’s a subway line and you can just get back on the other way, or even better the Yamanote line which just goes round and round central Tokyo – one of my Japanese mates once slept for a full 8 hours on the Yamanote line after a heavy session!

But if it’s the last train of the day, you’re gonna have to fork out for a taxi or somewhere to sleep… and if it isn’t a subway line, but a long-distance JR train, and you find yourself in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in the wrong prefecture, then you have a problem!

So there I was, in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, in what appeared to be the wrong prefecture. It’s only 26 minutes from Osaka station to Kyoto station, but I woke up some 90 minutes after boarding, at the end of the line, at 1:30 am, in some place called Maibara.

Maibara Station (this was taken on another occasion when I changed trains there, and actually shows the bullet train tracks rather than the bit I woke up in that night)

I dragged myself to my feet, the situation dawning on me slowly at first, and then sprang into action as I realised I might be stranded… I drunkenly lurched off the train and stagger-ran along the platform towards one of the JR station staff, yelling, “Kyoto! Kyoto?” at him, gesticulating at the empty platforms around us.

He saw this wild-eyed drunken gaijin mess coming at him, mastered his panic, and raised his crossed forearms in a big X, the universal Japanese symbol of ‘sorry / you’re screwed / can’t help you’.

My Japanese was still very basic at the time, but I was able to ask him a question or two and understand enough to know that that was indeed the last train, and that the next train back to Kyoto was indeed in the morning, after 5 o’clock.

What I wasn’t able to understand was where exactly Maibara was. Maybe not too far, I hoped, and went out to find the taxi rank.

…where I learned a cab would cost hundreds of dollars! “Okay, you’ve gone pretty bloody far,” I realised, “so what now?”

The name Maibara (米原) literally means ‘rice fields’, and it really did seem to be a case of calling a spade a spade because I could see fuck all else there, other than the small gathering of businesses clustered around the concrete of the station’s immediate environs.

Maibara, Shiga — In front of Maibara Station

And then I saw the shining lights of a 7-Eleven, that 24-hour beacon of hope in even the most obscure of Japanese towns. There I could ask for directions to a karaoke place or internet cafe in which to crash for a few hours; they always have a map stashed behind the counter somewhere, which the guy pulled out to show me I’d gone flying past Kyoto and was round the other side of Japan’s biggest lake, Lake Biwa, in Shiga prefecture.

He also explained that the nearest karaoke places and so on were in the next town back towards Kyoto, a place called Hikone.

So that became my mission; get to Hikone, get an overnight deal in a karaoke room for a few hours’ kip, and get the first train to Kyoto.

Unfortunately in the store I’d also realised I hardly had any money – just about enough for a karaoke room and the train, but not for a taxi to Hikone (and I didn’t have my ATM card or any money yet in my Japanese account).

There was a policeman out front of the store, so I checked with him the correct road for Hikone and how long it would take to walk. He laughed at the question, but reckoned it’d be about 45 minutes.

So off I marched through this chilly spring night past fields of moonlit rice paddies, listening to the croakings of an army of frogs, cursing my idiocy, and copping regular facefulls of spiderwebs. That policeman was full of shit! He’d clearly never walked it, and even though I shook off my drunken legs and got my march on it still took about two hours; on and on I walked, laughing at myself, cursing myself, and occasionally appreciating the silver countryside and the chorus of frogs, and finally arrived in Hikone.

By that point there were only a couple of hours left to kill before the train, so the money I’d earmarked for a karaoke room was instead spent on some food and a hot drink from another 7-Eleven, and I slept on a bench for an hour outside the station until it opened up for the first train.

And so, finally, tired and hungover, I was on the train heading back to Kyoto… it gradually filled up, picking up more and more passengers at each town along the line, a horde of grey-faced grey-suited salarymen making their grim way to a new week of grind, early morning commuters heading from their homes in Shiga to the office in Kyoto or Osaka – a daily routine I was glad wasn’t mine (it was Monday morning and I had Sundays & Mondays off), and I wouldn’t have swapped places with them even in the shattered, post-drunken, thoroughly disheveled state I was in. They were starting another long week of commuting and working, while I was on my way to crawl into the blessed sanctuary of my futon, utterly knackered, but one lesson the wiser – that lesson being, avoid drunk sleeping on the train in Japan!

And I never did so again – whenever I was drunk on the train after that, I always stood by the doors! Though it proved not to be the last of my misadventures on Japan’s railways…

Have you ever fallen asleep on the train? Where? And where did you end up?!

Visiting Japan? Click the banner to order your JR Pass:

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For more posts on Japan see here, and check out my quick guide to Kyoto

For my Japan snowboarding guide, click here

Check out my guides to hiking in Kyoto and Tokyo

For my Japan overland travel guide, click here

Beijing to Chengdu in the autumn holiday: 27 hours in a tin of sardines!

Beijing, Chengdu, China, Overland travel, Trains, Travel tales

Obviously, the train was packed. It was the autumn holidays, when the whole of China travels home to see family, and the only tickets available had been for the hard seat carriages – these carriages do have numbered individual seats (‘hard’ meaning non-reclining, because there are so many packed in), but they also serve as standing room carriages for those without seats. This train was originating from the enormous Beijing West station, where I was attempting to board, and would take a mere 27 hours to get from Beijing to Chengdu down in Sichuan province…

Beijing West train station: 27 hours from Beijing to Chengdu — Beijing West train station

I’d been to Sichuan once before for pandas and hotpot, so this time I was just passing through en route to Yunnan; I didn’t fancy the 40-odd hour train ride all the way to Kunming though (in those Chinese pre-bullet train days), so Chengdu seemed a good place to break the journey and visit the Great Buddha while applying for a visa extension at the Leshan PSB. Arriving at Beijing West I was mentally prepared for a tough 27 hours in an uncomfortable seat on a packed train, but the first challenge was simply getting on the train in the first place! It was so completely, totally packed, just getting into the vestibule meant getting through a seething wall of people, luggage, and angry shouting.

The huge stone Buddha of Leshan — The Leshan Great Buddha – where I witnessed a brawl on the steps

Secure in the knowledge that I had a designated seat already reserved and that I’d be able to move the asshole I was certain to find already occupying it, I hung back and waited for the shoving and shouting to die down a little, for everyone to settle down sufficiently for me to at least somewhat calmly get on. However it quickly became apparent that the train would leave without me long before the passengers settled into any form of order, and I was going to have to roll my sleeves up and do this Chinese style i.e. batter my way through that wall of people. And batter my way I did, shoving through the dense crowd, not saying excuse me, not saying sorry; that’s how it’s done, and others in the way are treated as obstacles rather than people. Get yourself to your goal and to hell with everyone else.

And of course, some asshole was already there, sitting in my seat; I told him in Chinese it was my seat and showed him my ticket, and with a glare he vacated it, instead squeezing in with his mates on the seats on the on the other side of the small table. I claimed my spot and settled in, and I’d even amazingly managed to get my bag on the rack a short distance away (competition for luggage space was, if anything, even worse than for seats – migrant workers in China travel with huge amounts of stuff, I guess pretty much all their possessions in a couple of massive hold-alls, as they move between construction jobs in the cities and their rural villages back in the countryside).

The first hours of the journey were dull and uneventful, as the grey buildings of Beijing gave way to the grey air of the surrounding countryside; the riotous mass of the platform at Beijing West had finally settled into their seats and standing spots, and everyone just sat or stood quietly, snoozing or playing with their phones.

My fellow passengers were a mix of young and old, and I figured a lot of them were family groups due to the way they were sharing their seats; each little table had six seats around it, with 8 to 10 people taking turns to sit in the six seats.

It was when I went to the toilet that I realised I had this wrong; upon returning to my seat I found it occupied by an old lady. Now, I hadn’t minded making that other asshole move, but I wasn’t moving this old dear. And then, as I had more time to observe the behaviour around me, it dawned on me that seat reservations counted for nothing in this carriage; the way the overcrowded train was dealt with was that you occupied a seat only for as long as you physically sat in it, in most cases being until you needed the bathroom. Go to the toilet, and it’s someone else’s turn. That ‘other asshole’ who’d been in my seat wasn’t an asshole at all; rather, he was doing it the way it was done, and I was in fact the asshole for thinking my ticket gave me exclusive territorial rights to that specific seat. I saw now that things weren’t working that way with the train so packed – we were all in this together, and all seats were available to all passengers.

It also became apparent that people were often standing just to let others sit, even if they didn’t actually need the toilet, and I realised that with this train being so full, so uncomfortable, and taking so long, this really was the best way to deal with a pretty unpleasant journey.

The day dragged itself monotonously away, gloom in the carriage and gloom out the windows, but as night fell on the fields outside and the lights flickered on, things loosened up on board. The silence was broken and conversations struck, and bags of snacks and decks of cards were produced. I observed a few rounds of this one card game that everyone seemed to be playing, but couldn’t make out the rules other than that the objective was to get rid of all your cards and then loudly proclaim your victory. The mechanics for actually doing so were hard to make out.

And then, to my surprise, a young chap who’d been mostly sitting at the same table as me suddenly asked, in English, if I’d like to play. He explained the rules and then coached me through my first few heavy defeats until I got the hang of it and could fend for myself; a decent game called ‘two soldiers, one king’ or some such, involving one player (with the strongest hand) against a team of two, the cards thrown down on the table with a theatrical slapping motion.

He spoke great English and told me he was from Chengdu and a student at Peking University, heading home for the holidays. Then the girl across the aisle leaned over and explained she was also a Peking University student heading home from Beijing to Chengdu to see family… I told her I’d thought the people sitting around her were family and friends, which confused her no end. These people were all strangers who’d only met when they got on the train; the sharing of seats was just the obvious thing to do in the situation, and it was strange to them that I’d taken it to mean they all knew each other. This eminently sensible approach was a far cry from the chaotic scenes at Beijing West, and the contrast was yet another example of China’s tendency to infuriate and fascinate at the same time.

I’m not going to try and make out that the 27 hours I spent on that train from Beijing to Chengdu were some sort of life changing moment or mind-blowing travel experience, or even merely time well spent; fact is, it sucked. It was uncomfortable and (for the most part) extremely tedious, with hardly even any decent scenery to watch (mostly just smog-smothered fields, unbroken for hundreds of kilometres on end), and I arrived in Chengdu completely knackered (I’m sure we all did). You’d have been doing very well to snatch more than two hours sleep in that carriage – the only reason I even managed that was because one of my fellow passengers offered me her window seat in the middle of the night, and that was the only seat I found it possible to sleep in (some lucky people can sleep anywhere, but I’m not one of them); after grabbing a couple of hours I then offered the prime spot to one of the other standers near me. It was that camaraderie, the attitude that we were all in this crappy situation together and should split the discomfort as evenly as possible, that made it bearable; and it was that camaraderie, with the card games and the chit chat, that made it as memorable an experience as it was an uncomfortable one. Still, not one I’d want to repeat.

With the recent improvements to the rail network in China and high speed rail now reaching most corners of the country (and vastly increasing the overall capacity of the system), there’s no longer any need to endure such a 27-hour train journey across China. That was only 5 years ago, yet you can now get from Beijing to Chengdu in under 8 hours by HSR (though the slow trains do still operate, if you want to save money or just fancy it… still advisable to avoid travel in the peak holiday seasons – just look at this shit show). 8 hours remains a long time to sit on a train of course, and you’ll still have plenty of opportunities to make new friends – when taking the bullet train from Guangzhou to Beijing (8 hours) once I sat next to a footie fanatic, and we agreed to support one another’s teams. As I’m a Leeds United fan and he was a Guangzhou Evergrande fan, that worked out pretty well for me! (a short time later, Evergrande became Asian champions… meanwhile Leeds continue to languish in the English second division)

The breakneck pace of development in China is a remarkable thing to witness; visit just a couple of years apart and you seem to see a decade of progress. A price is paid in environmental issues of course, and some people benefit more while others are left behind, and China can still be a tough place to live and travel; but it is always fascinating, even on a boring 27-hour train ride.

Update: the journey described here was in 2012. Just 5 years later it seems that the card games and socialising are a thing of the past on China’s slow trains, with everyone absorbed in their smartphones. The bullet trains have pretty much been like that since they started, but obviously this is more to do with phone technology than the trains themselves.

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If you’re travelling around by China by train, these days it’s easiest to book your train tickets online. You still have to line up to physically show your ID and pick up your tickets, but that’s better than it used to be; if you know your dates you can book multiple journeys in advance and pick all the tickets up at the same time. Unless you have a Chinese residency number you can’t use the official site, so I recommend using 12go Asia*

Make sure to sign up for a VPN service before arriving in China so you can use the internet as normal – see here

For more China posts, click here

See my China overland travel guide here

(*this is an affiliate link i.e. if you use it to book a train ticket, I’ll score a commission; this comes out of their profit margin at no extra cost to you. Thank you in advance should you choose to use this link!)

Sapporo to Kyoto by local train; a bizarre encounter in Tomakomai, the dog-eat-dog-politely world of busy Japanese trains, and a heroic last stand in Hiraizumi

History, Hokkaido, Japan, Overland travel, Tohoku, Trains, Travel tales

Rusutsu ski resort, Hokkiado — Rusutsu ski resort in Hokkaido

Part One: A Bizarre Encounter at Tomakomai Station

“Hey. Fuck you!”

…what the? I heard this woman before I ever saw her; she’d sneaked up behind me while I was on the phone and suddenly started screaming in my free ear…

“Fuck you! Hey, fuck you!”

It quickly became apparent that her entire English vocabulary consisted of these three words (although actually it was more like “fakkuyuu” with her heavy katakana pronunciation).

I was standing in the concourse area of a freezing cold Tomakomai train station at 11pm in early January, having just found out my return ferry from Hokkaido to Kyoto prefecture that night was cancelled due to rough seas; I’d just spent the New Year holiday snowboarding in Hokkaido, and now I was trying to work out what to do and was on the phone to my manager, letting her know the situation just in case I didn’t make it back in time for work two days later.

Of course, she was saying just stay the night and get a flight tomorrow, and that was indeed by far the most sensible option; however it was also going to be a pretty expensive option and I didn’t really have the budget for a last-minute flight and a room at the business hotel opposite the station (if they even had any rooms available). The last train back to Sapporo (the only big city near there, where I’d just come from) had already left, so that wasn’t an option. If I stayed the night to use my ferry ticket the following night I would get back in time for work, but that would be risky as there was no guarantee the ferry would run the next night either so it didn’t seem a good idea.

Another option was the night train leaving Tomakomai at midnight going through the undersea Seikan tunnel to Aomori at the northern tip of Japan‘s main Honshu island; I was considering taking that, and then either riding the bullet train back to Kyoto from there, or riding the local trains down through the Tohoku region to Sendai then a night bus (the following night) from Sendai to Kyoto. The cheapest option (other than the ferry) would actually have been the Seishun 18 Kippu, a kind of train pass available in the holidays in Japan which gives you unlimited train travel but only on the slow local trains… it would’ve got me back to Kyoto for only 10,000 yen (around 100 US dollars), but taking the best part of two days… but in any case, when I enquired about buying one it turned out they’d stopped sales two days earlier.

And the bullet train from Aomori to Kyoto was crazy expensive, more than a flight would’ve been, so that was out. It was looking like either stay the night and fly, or take the night train, then local trains to Sendai, then a night bus to Kyoto… the former would be expensive, the latter would be a complete bastard of a journey, and I wasn’t keen on either option.

So there I was talking to my manager and asking if she had any other ideas, when this woman suddenly screamed “fuck you” in my other ear.

I jumped out of my skin the first time, and turned to see a short, middle-aged Japanese lady, dressed perfectly normally for Hokkaido in winter, but with a wild mess of tangled hair up top and an even wilder look in the eye.

“Hey you! Fuck you! FUCK YOU!! Hey, fuck you!”

Okay, okay, I get the picture… I grabbed my bags and walked down the other end of the concourse to continue my phone conversation, but 30 seconds later it started again…

“Hey, fuck you! Fuck you!! FAKKUYUUU!”

She’d followed me along the concourse! I turned and went back the other way again, and now she followed hot on my heels, fuck youing the whole way.

I apologised to my manager and said I’d call her back, and started trying to speak in Japanese to this woman screaming at me, just to say hello, okay, there’s no problem – but that only led to her hurling an absolute torrent of abuse at me in Japanese, only half of which I caught and that’s probably a good thing.

Jesus, this woman’s actually quite scary, I thought, better get away from her, and I went to seek safety in the herd by going into the waiting room.

When I said it was cold that night, I mean like minus 10 (Celsius) outside and perhaps 0 degrees on the concourse; but the waiting room was heated and nice & toasty, so there were a dozen or so passengers waiting in there for the night train. So I went in to join them, and thankfully my new friend didn’t follow me but instead went over to the ticket window and started shouting at the Japan Rail staff. Watching though the window, I got the impression that perhaps this was a regular occurrence and they were used to this woman and her outbursts.

The ticket barriers at Tomakomai station; you can see the ticket window on the left, and the waiting room is just out of shot to the right

So I sat there for a few minutes mulling over my options and thinking that maybe I should go ask for a room at the hotel and sleep on it, and if no rooms were available then I’d jump on the night train. But before I’d picked up my bags, I became aware of a change of atmosphere in the waiting room; I looked around and there she was again, now standing silently but intently in the middle of the room, turning to glare at each of the waiting passengers one by one, until we were all watching her in suspense, wondering what was about to happen.

And then, slowly and deliberately, she opened one side of her coat, and slowly and deliberately reached in with her other hand as if to draw a weapon… and we all watched with grim fascination as she slowly and deliberately pulled out a huge pair of kitchen scissors. Kitchen scissors… what the fuck?!

We all started edging away from her, backs to the walls, sidling towards the door, avoiding making eye contact with her, and no-one saying anything; she stood there, as if waiting for her cue to strike… and then all of a sudden she reached up, grabbed a fistful of her own hair, chopped it off with the scissors, and threw it at one of the passengers… and then did the same thing again to someone else, then me, and someone else again, all without saying a word. In the shocked silence we got the door open and made a pretty orderly evacuation while she stood there silently hacking handfuls of hair off and throwing them at us. It was quite the most surreal scene I think I’ve ever seen, never mind been a part of. And once we were all out we closed the door, and stood watching through the window as she continued to randomly chop her own hair off, now just scattering it willy-nilly around the room.

(I don’t mean to ridicule this woman or try to get laughs at her expense. Clearly this was a very disturbed individual, in need of help she wasn’t getting, perhaps living homeless in this brutally cold town and hanging out in this train station every night; I’m just trying to paint the surreal scene and her alarming behaviour…)

By now the station staff had come over, four of them if I remember correctly, and they went into the waiting room to talk to her. The most senior, the station manager I guess, approached her, hand held out palm-upwards, asking her to hand over the scissors; she leapt back into a fighting posture, her left hand out in front of her, cocking her right hand with the scissors up by her ear as if ready to lunge and stab with them.

I’m pretty sure everyone was now thinking “Holy shit, this is happening” and getting ready to run away or run back into the waiting room to help; yet we all stood motionless for what seemed like ages but was probably just a few seconds, waiting to see what she would do… and then, just like that, she relaxed, turned the scissors over to him handle first, sat down, and focused her attention on the TV mounted on the wall.

A collective sigh of relief went round the crowd, and I now knew how I was going to decide what to do. A couple of scenarios had run through my head – what if I get on the train, and she ends up being in the same carriage or even in the seat next to me? Given the extremely aggressive interest she’d shown towards me and her unpredictable behaviour I definitely didn’t want to be trying to sleep with her anywhere close by… on the other hand though, what if I decide to stay the night but can’t get a room at the hotel and go looking for somewhere else, and she ends up following me again?! Or I try to pass the night in the convenience store, and so does she?

All situations I wanted to avoid, so I went to the ticket window and asked if they knew if she had a ticket for the night train. They told me she definitely didn’t, and that was my decision made – I bought a one-way ticket to Aomori, and a short time later went down to the platform to wait for the soon-to-arrive train.

This particular station has the entire concourse and ticketing area built up above street level, meaning you go up the stairs into the station, and after passing through the ticket barriers you go down the stairs to the platforms. I went through the barrier and down, and she was still sitting quietly watching the TV so I thought that was that…

After a few minutes stood on the platform, shoulders hunched against the icy wind, it was a relief to see the train rolling into the station, its front end plastered with a solid 6-inch shield of ice and snow. As the doors opened I felt the inviting warmth calling from inside the carriage, but just then there was a commotion and a string of shouts from upstairs – I turned to look and there she was again, charging down the stairs, cheeks puffing, fists pumping, a look of such utter determination on her face, sprinting for the train door. She’d jumped over the damn ticket barriers and was trying to board the train! The station staff were in hot pursuit and rugby tackled her a few feet from the train door, and now she was screaming and cursing and fighting like her life depended on getting on that train; it was plain awful to see and hear, and that was the last I saw of that poor woman, struggling and kicking out against the people trying to subdue her on that freezing platform, the flurries of snow picking up and swirling around them under the bright lights as the train pulled out of the station.

Part Two: Hokkaido to Kyoto Overland, mostly by Local Train; Two Brutal Days, Two Legendary Heroes

Night train to Aomori, bullet train to Morioka

In 2015 the shinkansen was finally extended through the Seikan Tunnel from Aomori to Hakodate in southern Hokkaido, connecting Hokkaido directly to Tokyo by bullet train; as a result, these days there are no more night trains running through the tunnel.

However, at the time of my journey the bullet train didn’t yet reach Hokkaido and standard trains did the 6-hour run from Sapporo to Aomori several times a day each way, including the midnight train I was on. This was basically, in a nutshell, a total bitch; though it was a night train, it most certainly wasn’t a sleeper train. The seats barely reclined and the lights stayed fully on all night, and the train was more or less at capacity so I had an occupied seat next to me; the one slight saving grace was that at least I had the window seat, making it a little easier to sleep a bit. Only a bit though!

To say I arrived in Aomori bleary-eyed would be an understatement; I was probably looking full zombie as I lurched through the station on auto-pilot, searching for coffee. A short while later with caffeine taken care of I went to buy a local train ticket to Sendai, only to be told the line was blocked due to heavy snowfall overnight. The shinkansen was still running, so it was either a very long way round on a different local train, or a pricey bullet train ticket. As money was tight, I bought a shinkansen ticket only as far as Morioka, beyond which the local lines were operating as usual, and a local ticket from Morioka to Sendai. I have to say it was quite nice to be blasting along in that sleek green bullet train on that sunny winter morning after trundling along in the red-eye night train, and I didn’t want to get off; I realised later that I actually should’ve just got the shinkansen right to Sendai as switching to the local train in Morioka only saved me about 20 dollars… absolutely not worth it! But get off I did, and had an hour to kill in Morioka while waiting for the connection.

This gave me time to potter around the station, grab a sandwich, and top the caffeine level back up – this was a running theme over the course of the 2-day slog to Kyoto; occupying myself with where the next coffee was coming from was in its own stressful way a way of dealing with the stress of the journey. Morioka looked like a nice enough place, not that I saw much of it; one of the textbooks I was using in my English-teaching job in Kyoto had a couple of lessons about Iwate prefecture, of which Morioka is the capital. A town famous for its ironware, I recalled; cast-iron teapots in particular. But no time to check the place out; it was time to get on the local train, or rather, hell on wheels (if Hell is indeed other people).

The dog-eat-dog-politely world of busy trains in Japan

As I mentioned above, at Tomakomai station the night before I’d asked about buying a Seishun 18 Kippu, a holiday-season ticket that gives you 5 days of unlimited local train travel throughout Japan; it’s a popular and affordable way to cover a lot of ground, if you don’t mind doing it slowly. I hadn’t been able to buy one as the sales date had passed already; however, the validity date had not yet passed and a whole shitload of people had those tickets and were riding long-distance on the local trains that day. It was the last day of the New Year holiday, and Japan was on the move, heading home en masse. I lugged my bags down to the platform (I had all my snowboard gear with me) to find everyone already on the train, waiting for it to depart. Absolute sardines it was, and I just about squeezed in with all my stuff.

Now the way these local trains work is they run along a given section of a line, perhaps two hours, before going back the other way. The station where they turn back is the start of the next section of the line, with another train doing that run, and so on; so although that line extends all the way from Aomori to Tokyo, any given local train on it just does a short section, back and forth, serving every station (as opposed to the express trains which go long-distance and cruise through the minor stations, while the shinkansen boosts along on its own dedicated elevated lines).

What this means for long-distance local train travel is you ride a train for two hours to its switchback station, and get off there to board the next train continuing in the same direction. After two hours on that train, you do the same thing again, and again, until you reach your destination; going this way from Morioka to Sendai is a 4-hour job with two changes of train.

This might not sound so bad, and indeed usually wouldn’t be outside the peak holiday travel periods; but imagine a 3-carriage train, completely stuffed to the gills, pulling in at a train station platform with a mostly empty train waiting on the far platform; and everyone on the packed train is getting on the waiting train, and everyone wants to get a seat on that waiting train, and there are several people for every seat. Competition is fierce, and the competitors ruthless. Encumbered as I was with all my gear, I had no chance…

As the train pulls into the station, everyone’s already on their feet, bags at the ready, jostling for position at the doors. Some of those who’ve been standing for two hours have been canny enough to do so at the doors – if they know the correct side, or anyway had a lucky guess – and are in pole position. Others have been too slow on the uptake and are now anxiously trying to ferret through towards the doors, others are on the wrong side of the train and know they’re in trouble; toes are stepped on, backs are elbowed; and no-one says a word. Japan is famous for its polite society, and not falsely so; but in certain situations, like the one at hand, you see that sometimes the politeness is merely a matter of etiquette being rigidly followed, and that beneath that veneer of politeness some people can still be cold, ruthless, inconsiderate, selfish assholes. The doors open, the starting gun is sounded; the crowd surges out of the train and runs along the platform, up the stairs and onto the footbridge over the tracks, down the stairs to the far platform and onto the waiting train. Those at the end of the train nearest the stairs are in the know, or in luck; those at the wrong end are desperate, and shit out of luck. Shins are kicked, people ‘accidentally’ knocked aside by swinging bags, the crowd huffing and puffing and shoving its way across; and still no-one says a word, no-one remonstrates or becomes angry, and the polite veneer is maintained. Those who get seats do not celebrate their victory; those who do not, accept it, casually returning to their smartphone screens as though they never wanted a seat anyway thank you very much, you’re welcome to it. The last available seat is a photo finish, two middle-aged men dashing for it and executing spinning lunging butt-dives into it at the same time; they collide, the bigger guy lands with more of his butt on more of the seat, the other momentarily in his lap; the loser quickly stands and walks away, pushes through the crowd to go stand at the far end of the car. At no point during or after their head-to-head do they ever make eye contact, or speak, or acknowledge the competition they just took part in. And this is how decorum is maintained; the pandemonium quickly settles down and everyone gets on with quietly occupying whatever seat or standing position they’ve ended up in and ignoring the world around them. Although it’s polite, in its way, it’s not very pleasant; but it works. Everyone’s on the train, no-one’s injured, no-one’s (visibly) angry; we’re all getting where we’re going. As for me, I already knew I’d be standing and watched the battle from the platform, taking the time to drink a can of coffee from the vending machine, and grab another for the road. At least being the last one on means you’re right in the door and can watch the scenery go by, which is some recompense (or so I told myself, as I looked out at Mt Iwate in the distance).

Mt Iwate, snow covered in winter — Mt Iwate

It was a tough little bit of travel, for sure; but there was a silver lining to be found – not the minor consolation of being able to see the scenery, but a genuine bonus – as I ended up visiting the UNESCO-listed town of Hiraizumi. Somewhere south of Morioka, the conductor announced the next station (as per usual), and I caught the name Hiraizumi… that rings a bell, where’ve I heard that before? Ah yes, of course – the same ESL textbook that told me about the ironware in Morioka. I remembered that Hiraizumi was some sort of historical area with a golden temple hall (the Konjiki-do, a beautiful building – photography is prohibited and pictures of it are hard to come by, but the temple’s homepage has one), and as it was around lunchtime I bailed out of that god-awful train at Hiraizumi station; local trains on that particular bit of line are roughly hourly, so I figured I’d eat something, do a quick whip around the temple district, and get back on the train an hour or two later. I didn’t know it yet, but Hiraizumi is one of the key locations in what came to be my favourite tale of Japanese history / folklore.

Hiraizumi and the last stand of Yoshitsune & Benkei

If you read around my Japan posts a bit, sooner or later you’ll find me talking about the legendary heroes Yoshitsune and Benkei; Yoshitsune is Japan’s most beloved tragic hero, Benkei his loyal retainer. Like a Japanese Robin Hood and Little John, the two first met in single combat; and just like Robin Hood and Little John, the smaller but faster and smarter Yoshitsune outwitted and defeated the man-mountain Benkei.

They were inseparable ever-after, Yoshitsune becoming a great general in his half-brother’s army as they won the Genpei War and avenged their father’s death at the hands of the Taira clan. But unlike Robin Hood and Little John, these noble warriors then met a violent and early death; betrayed by his jealous half-brother, Yoshitsune fled to the north, Benkei with him all the way to the bitter end. They made their last stand in Hiraizumi, where, realising his defeat was inevitable, Yoshitsune committed the ritual suicide that allowed him to die with his honour; buying him the time to complete the act, Benkei went out on to the castle bridge and single-handedly held the entire enemy army at bay. Every soldier who approached was summarily dispatched, so they stood back and rained volleys of arrows down on him; but this man was such a beast, was so utterly determined, that he died standing right up on his feet, stuck full of arrows but never going down. By the time his opponents realised he was already dead and they could safely pass, Yoshitsune had completed his honourable death within the keep.

The grave of Benkei in Hiraizumi — Benkei’s final resting place in Hiraizumi

A cracking little story that, in my opinion; but I didn’t actually know it yet at the time I went to Hiraizumi! I’d just got off the train to eat some noodles and see the Konjiki-do, but wandering around the various other temples and historical sites, I also happened to visit the grave of Benkei (it’s next to the main road between the station and the main Chuson-ji temple area – alas, I missed the grave of Yoshitsune which is nearby but set a little away from the main road). Later, back in Kyoto, I learned the full story of Yoshitsune and Benkei – the two men had both had their formative years in the mountains around Kyoto, leading up to their fateful meeting and the duel on Gojo Bridge.

Painting of Yoshitsune training with the tengu in Kurama — Classical painting of Yoshitsune training with the tengu in Kurama

While the young exile Yoshitsune was learning his unsurpassed swordsmanship and military skills from the tengu forest spirits of Mt Kurama in order to one day avenge his father, the warrior monk Benkei (then of Enryaku-ji temple on Mt Hiei) went around Kyoto generally fucking shit up, stealing giant bells from rival temples and booting them around the mountains and making them cry, and beating up 999 swordsmen and keeping their swords – Yoshitsune was the thousandth to face him, and the first to ever defeat him, leading to the oath of loyalty.

Painting of Benkei dragging away the Miidera bell — Classical painting of Benkei stealing the bell from Miidera temple by Lake Biwa

Another historical figure closely associated with Hiraizumi is the great poet Matsuo Basho; Hiraizumi was the northernmost point he reached on his famous 1689 journey immortalised in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, where he contemplated the tragic ends of Yoshitsune and Benkei 500 years earlier and penned one of his most famous haiku:

夏草や
兵どもが
夢の跡

Natsugusa-ya
Tsuwamonodomo-ga
Yume-no-ato

Summer grass,
The only remains
of warriors’ dreams

So, after later learning the story of Yoshitsune and Benkei and getting into my Basho, I was retroactively stoked that I’d already accidentally ended up visiting Hiraizumi on that 2-day mission from Hokkaido to Kyoto. And that was the silver lining of an otherwise totally unpleasant journey, even though I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time.

Finally, a view of Mt Fuji

As for the rest of the journey, it sucked. Upon arriving in Sendai, I found the night buses to Kyoto were all full; the best I could do was a night bus to Tokyo, so that was another 6-hour leg of night transportation with only a few hours of sleep, and then another full day of long-distance local train travel from Tokyo to Kyoto. That’s actually a 9-hour job, with 6 changes of train; but thankfully, it was the first day back at work for most of the country, and the brutal crowds of the previous day were gone. I got a seat on every train, and even got a picture of the usually coy Mt Fuji (on my crappy old camera phone):

I’ve ridden the train past Mt Fuji a whole bunch of times, and that was the only time I ever actually saw it from the train – in fact that was the first time I’d ever clearly seen the whole mountain, despite the fact I’d actually climbed Fuji the previous summer! (we could hardly see it even while standing on it)

So I arrived back in Kyoto on the Monday evening having left Sapporo on the Saturday evening, having had perhaps 5 hours of sleep and an absurd amount of coffee; I ate and showered and collapsed onto my futon, and got up for work in the morning. That 2-day journey really wasn’t fun, not fun at all, and work the next day was pretty tough; but at least I finally got to see Mt Fuji properly, and I came to be glad I’d ended up visiting Hiraizumi. As for the lady in Tomakomai station, who knows what became of her; I hope she’s okay, and spending her nights somewhere better than Tomakomai station.

Photo Credits

Don’t really have many photos from this journey unfortunately. Credit for pics above as follows:

Three classical paintings: public domain

Tomakomai station exterior: screenshot from Google Maps

Tomakomai station interior: Konstantin Leonov, Flickr

Mt Iwate: yisris, Flickr

Benkei’s grave: Yoshihide Urushihara, Flickr

The images from Flickr are used under Creative Commons Licence.

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