Through Japan via train 🚂

After 6 days in Tokio I felt the urge to explore some places outside of the big city 🌃 So, I went to Mount Fuji - the tallest mountain/vulcano in Japan. Getting there and back was a whole day trip since Mt. Fuji 🗻 is approximately 100 km away from Tokyo and even the fastest option takes 2 hours. I found out about all of that via the Tokyo Cheapo 🏷️website (https://tokyocheapo.com/entertainment/tokyo-to-…) the night before. I can really recommend the website. It has a lot of valuable info and is kept up to date. Before I went to Kawaguchiko (according to the website a well-known place for Fuji-spotting) in the morning, I picked up my JR Rail Pass 🪪 from Shibuya Station. My first attempt on the night before was not successful since the service center was already closed and the ticket officer told me that only after I already stood for 15 min. in line 😫
But that morning I had better luck 🍀 After collecting the JR Rail Pass and seat reservations for my first long-distance ride to Sapporo on the next day, I started my journey to Kawaguchiko through the maze 🔎 of the Japanese regional train system. Cross-checking the Google Maps 🗺️ routing with the descriptions given on the Tokyo Cheapo website definitely helped a lot. Nevertheless, it took the entire morning to get to Kawaguchiko. Plus, I wanted to take the cheapest option. 🤑 That alone has added an hour travel time to my journey; which was in the end probably not worth it.
At Kawaguchiko lake - the biggest one of the 5 surrounding lakes for Mt. Fuji - I took the cable car 🚠 to the top of a mountain on the opposite side of the lake. The views were very nice although some clouds ⛅️ gathered right in front of Mt. Fuji. One caveat to the cable car was that it took much time to get up and back down again. The reason for that was not so much the actual time ⏱️ spent in the cable car but rather the fact that Kawaguchiko as a whole is completely overcrowded with tourists 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 You had to queue up for everything; be it the cable car (I probably waited 30 min. to go up and maybe 15 min. to go down) or for entry to a restaurant or just the tourist bus 🚌 that I took to get to Oishi Park since it was supposed to offer some great views with the lake or some beautiful flowers/plants 🌸 in front of Mt. Fuji When I arrived at Oishi Park, many clouds ⛅️ gathered in front of Mt. Fuji again. Damn clouds - I made all this way out there and I had no unobstructed view of Mt. Fuji to show for it yet. 😒 So, I grabbed a coffee ☕️ and some biscuits in the Cafe of the Oishi Park and just sat there for a while. It is getting dark pretty early here in Japan 🇯🇵 (sunset is at approximately 5pm) and I was lucky: as soon as the sunset 🌅 started, the clouds moved away from Mt Fuji and I could see it clearly from various spots in the park. So, there you have it - sometimes all you need to do is: wait. 😎 After sunset, I went back to Kawaguchi Station 🚉 and took the trains back to Tokio. This time I was optimizing for shortest travel time and didn’t care about the cost since I needed to be back at the capsule hotel early enough to pick up my luggage 🧳 and arrange for another accommodation that night.
Somehow I had screwed up my hotel reservations and had none for the night but I remembered a conversation with the host from the guesthouse I stayed first in Tokio: it is common practice for Japanese people to spend the night in an Internet 🛜 cafe. So, I did exactly that. 😅 To European this sounds much worse than it actually is. Let me explain: for only approximately 20,- EURs you get a private room with a computer and screen in it. The floor is almost entirely covered with some material similar to a leather couch 🛋️ and you can put some additional blankets on it to make it a little softer. Access to shared bathroom & shower as well as a towel is also included which makes it practically like a private room in a hostel. And as cherry 🍒 on top you can watch movies, play games or just read one of the many manga comics that are available for free. That night I watched the new Flash and Batman movie 🎥 before I layed down to sleep. It helped that I had many useful things in my backpack though: the sarong from Indonesia 🇮🇩 as blanket, my neck pillow that I would usually put on on long distance flights, a t-shirt and comfy throusers as pyjamas for that night …

As I wrote earlier, I bought a Full JR Rail Pass for 3 weeks (so I can take any JR operated train in the entire country) starting from today. It simply made sense💡given that I wanted to see many different locations in my time here and the generally high travel costs. For today, I reserved seats for my travel to Sapporo on Hokkaido island way up in the north of Japan 🇯🇵 That trip alone almost covers a third of what I paid for the JR Rail Pass (100.000 JP¥ = 700,- EUR).
Getting to the train was relatively simple this morning. Meanwhile I knew the Tokyo subway system well enough to effortlessly navigate from Shibuya to Tokyo station. I deliberately was half an hour early to have enough time to find the platform my train was leaving from and to have a coffee. The journey with Shinkansen or bullet train 🚅 - as you might heard before - was tranquil. The train went within 4 hours from Tokio on Honshu to Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto on Hokkaido and arrived exactly at the forseen ETA. I would compare the train to our ICEs in Germany 🇩🇪 it’s only much more punctual 😅
I guess it gets its name because it looks like a bullet. Older models had even more resemblance with a bullet.
In Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto I changed to the Limited Express (similar to IC in Germany) to Sapporo. During that train ride I was able to get a first glimpse at the beautiful landscape on Hokkaido with its lakes as well as colorful fields and trees with distant mountains as backdrop. As a bonus, the train ran also right next to the ocean 🌊 when the sun was setting in west.
On Hokkaido the sun sets even earlier than on Honshu. Thus, I arrived in Sapporo only when it was dark 🌌 So, there was not much to do in the evening. In my hostel I now share a 4-bed dorm with a very talkative Canadian guy from Quebeque who was traveling Asia for the past 30+ years. India, Nepal, Thailand. Vietnam, Korea, Japan … I have heard already lots of travel stories and will probably continue to hear 👂 a lot more in the next few days. 😅 Czytaj więcej