Great Train Journeys of the World

Today, we start our train journey of Japan, about 2,500km from North to South.

We started in Sapporo, and we will stop in Hakodate, Tokyo, Hakone ( Mt. Fuji), Osaka, Kayosan, Fukuoka, and Nagasaki, over the next 2 weeks.

It's not that straightforward travelling by train, at least at 1st. In China, everything is in Chinese and English. In Japan, more often than not, no English. In China, it is easy to reserve online, with no tickets, just ID. In Japan, the opposite, though to be fair, they do have English speaking reservation desks at larger stations. But don't lose those tickets or you'll have to pay again.

The next challenges are to find the right platform, the exact spot where your carriage will stop, and, if possible, to get on 1st because space for large bags is very limited.

We had carriage 4 today, but at any given spot, you see little signs telling you that for the 7 different trains that use the platform, the stopping place for carriage 4 is different. See the photo, where Lola points to the correct sign for us.Read more