A few days into my Japan stay now and loving it. A delightful place to travel in - feels very safe, very helpful friendly people, travel is so easy and well organised, everywhere very clean. Just as you might imagine. Due to an unintended flight change I arrived a day late into Tokyo and after a night at an airport hotel collected my Japan Rail Pass (for all the technological brilliance here a voucher was posted to me and I had to redeem it at a ticket office for a paper pass) and headed west.
I took the bullet train, the Shinkansen, which operate on entirely separate tracks at speeds of up to 200mph (320kph):
They don't turn around - the seats are on a simple mechanism and are lifted and turned for the return journey so passengers are always facing forward. This was true on many smaller trains too. Some very local ones have inward facing seats and are narrower than the Shinkansen which has 3 sets on one side of the aisle and 2 on the other.
I had tried to book a seat but was told the reserved cars were full. So I duly stood for an unreserved car. There is a marked spot for each car and people queue accordingly. Even on the very small local trains everyone forms one queue on the platform. In the event the carriage was virtually empty so got a window seat.
It's the little things in Japan that make all the difference. There was a little windowsill for no other apparent reason than rest your elbow on. The conductor turns and bows to the carriage as he leaves (I saw the same thing with supermarket shelf stackers as they left the shop floor).
Announcements are generally made in English too and the train displays inside and out also scroll. through the info in English.
And I got a glimpse of Mount Fuji (heavily zoomed in):
My first stop was Himeji to see one of the 12 remaining original medieval castles in Japan. This one is known as the White Heron castle due to its colour and resemblance to a bird. Also very busy! All stations have coin operated lockers so easy to leave your bag and head out for a few hours unladen.
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Even the manhole covers are beautiful (not all so elaborate)
I then took another train across to the large island of Shikoku to stay in this intriguing hostel in Takamatsu:
Next door to a pet lodge. Lovely place with lots of little touches and things for free which many places now charge for: laundry, towels etc. Probably cost about £30 a night but worth it. There are cheaper places, accommodation doesn't have to be expensive here.
The next day I took a 30 minute train journey to Marugame to see another smaller and far less busy original castle:
More to follow...
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