Buying a Japan Rail Pass is relatively expensive at $750 NZD for two weeks, so it’s important to make the most of it. We decided to visit the far north of Japan, to the island of Hokkaido, specifically the main city of Sapporo. This involves taking three trains, a bullet train, a regular train, and an express train.
Leaving Tokyo at 8.20am, we caught the Hayabusa Shinkansen. This is an extremely fast, yet relatively boring train ride. Because the Shinkansen is optimised for speed rather than viewing, it’s mostly tunnels. Tunnels tunnels tunnels. However, it is quick at 310 km/h, and the trip to Shin-Aomori, 700km away, took a couple of hours. The equivalent trip in New Zealand would take about 10 hours by rail, so it’s a little quicker here.
While it is quick and mostly on time, this once, the Shinkansen was about 5 minutes late. Since we only had 10 minutes to make our next connection, we were a little stressed at Shin-Aomori station. We sprinted down the stairs from the Shinkansen line, ran towards the next platform, sprinted up and down the stairs, and made it to the Super Hakucho, with only a couple of minutes to spare.
However, this train unlike all others we’ve experienced in Japan, must have been running on local time, as it was about another 10 minutes before it actually departed. So that was good news that we sprinted just in time to wait on the train while it appeared to do nothing in particular.
Finally we departed. The most exciting and boring thing about this train is that in goes through one of the largest tunnels in the world, 53 km long. Engineering wise it’s amazing, but for views of Japan, not so much. Just before we arrived at Hakodate to transfer to the next train, Super Hakucho decided to become dead Hakucho, and not move at all.
It’s times like those that I wish I knew more Japanese. When a train stops in the middle of nowhere, and a guy starts talking on the train for ages, then you know that something bad is happening. About 10 minutes later, the train then departed the middle of nowhere, bound for the next train we were to surely miss.
Thankfully I know the smallest amount of emergency Japanese, so I asked the guy next to me if he spoke English. He didn’t really, but I asked him if he was going to Sapporo, and he was, on the same train as Kathryn and I. So in the end, we just decided to follow him like white on rice. No racist analogy intended. In 2015 the Shinkansen will go all the way to Hakodate, meaning that this annoying slow middle train gets cut out which is good news.
The next train was Hokuto, from Hakodate to Sapporo. The views from this train in the beginning are amazing. As it’s November, there’s a light dusting of snow on the hills, which soon become mountains in the distance, which then turns into an endless sea. But no need to wax poetic about it, it just looks very peaceful, relaxing, and desolate. While that doesn’t seem that exciting compared to Tokyo, when you’re surrounded by people on a train, with someone brushing against your bum, sometimes it’s nice to relax, and know that all of Japan isn’t like that.
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❖ Equipment ❖
Panasonic Lumix GF7
Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens
Sony FDR-X3000 Action Cam
Sony VCT-STG1 Shooting Grip
AloJapan.com