Japan Adventure #11

Friday was my last day in Hiroshima, so bright and early Saturday was checkout day. I grabbed the streetcar around the corner from my hotel, and headed for the JR Hiroshima station. An aside, the local streetcar system, called Hiroden, is sort of a museum of streetcars. There are some on the system (like the one I had when I arrived) that are obviously every bit of 40 years old, and there are some (like the one I had this morning) that are nearly brand-new. My car had a placard in it that said 2005. I arrived in the station about 30 minutes prior to my train’s departure, which is more than enough time since there is really no security – you just buy your ticket, put it through the turnstile, and go. An aside – the turnstiles in the train stations are pretty neat. They have RFID readers if you have a reusable pass, but they also have ticket readers. You insert your tickets, which could be printed tickets for something like Shinkasen, or could be a fare pass for the local metro lines with a fixed Yen value printed on them. The reader accepts the tickets inserted in any direction, orients them, reads them to determine validity and proper value, and usually stamps them and returns them, or if this is your final destination, retains the ticket. This is even if you have to insert multiple tickets for a multi-train trip, such as the one I am making which involves the Shinkasen to Tokyo and the N’EX to Narita. Pretty high-tech compared with something like the DC Metro’s farecard readers.

When I went to purchase my train ticket back to Tokyo and Narita, I found out that the train I wanted to take was sold out of reserved seats. Fortunately, there are 3 cars of non-reserved seats, so I had the attendant book me on a non-reserved ticket. An unknown (to me) upshot of this arrangement is that the ticket is several thousand yen cheaper, and it is not tied to a specific train. So, when I spied an N700 series (newest series of trains) train on the platform destined for Tokyo, I could hop on, even though it was an earlier train than the one I had planned to take.

I found a seat in car 1, which is apparently far enough removed from the smoking car (3) that there was no smoke odor. On this train, car 1 is actually in the back of the train. Japanese trains make a note to proudly proclaim which series they are. This is groups of trains which were manufactured based on the same design and as far as I can tell, the cars are numbered based on the series number (ie 600 series means car numbers are 6nn and so on). Usually the series of train identifies features and configuration more than differences in speed. All of the Shinkasen Nozomi superexpress trains travel at the same speed, but the N700 series, for example, has AC power near some seats. So, I’m sitting on the train, tapping away at my laptop with 100VAC feeding it, so that I don’t have to worry so much about finding a plug to charge it at Narita before boarding my 12 hour flight.

One of the nice things about being on the train during the day is that I can actually see some things out my window. Well, I can when we aren’t in a tunnel, that is. Apparently, the area near Hiroshima is fairly mountainous, and so we have spent a lot of time inside of tunnels. Often we’d exit one tunnel at the base of one mountain only to enter another into the next mountain a few seconds later. The tunnels really aren’t lit on the inside (one light every 7-10 seconds), so it just goes black. Once you leave the tunnel, the speed is more obvious, but it still doesn’t feel as fast as it actually is. I’m going to try to capture some video when we get a long stretch outside the city that may give an idea of the speed.

Once we get outside of the cities, you start seeing lots of rice paddies and other types of gardens next to individual homes. I have noticed that there are quite a lot of solar panels, both PV and hot water on both homes and high-rises here.

The girl came through with the food cart, and I chose some snacks, since I had to skip the hotel breakfast this morning. I grabbed some “Smoked Salmon Dry Chips” which are basically the equivalent of Salmon jerky. They’re good, less salty than most beef jerky, a bit more fishy tasting than fresh salmon might be. I noted that the outside of the package definitely has a nice example of Engrish on it – “Quarity and Natural” but the actual logo from the manufacturer has “Finest Quality” spelled properly. I completed my breakfast with some chocolate covered almonds and a drink.

Wow, that was nice. The train has just stopped in Osaka, and a lot of people boarded. The man in front of me turned around and warned me that he was going to be reclining his seat, so that I could move my laptop back and avoid it getting caught in the seat. The Shinkasen seats raise to fully upright – perpendicular to the floor, so you have to recline them a little in order to be comfortable, at least if you’re my height. They definitely recline further than airline seats, so I imagine it’s easier to sleep on a train like this. I definitely have plenty of legroom – a full foot between my knee and the seat in front of me, even at maximum recline. Approximately $200, 4 hours travel time – I say again, US, UR doing it wrong! I’m pretty sure that the electronic display is currently saying something about the train being good for the environment, as I just saw CO2 and ECO interspersed with a string of Japanese characters. I think it may also carry some news headlines, as I just saw NASA scroll by as well. Unfortunately, many of the messages on the board are not translated into English – so far, only the destinations and a security message (report suspicious activity) have been in English. The Japanese use of English is very inconsistent. While many official things (trains and airports) are bi-lingual, things like maps posted in public places, street signs, business signs, are often only in Kanji. However, if you watch Japanese TV, many of the commercials, brand names, etc have English words interspersed with the Japanese. And this is not just for words which don’t have a Japanese equivalent, it was common words as well. Common Japanese brands – Toshiba, Panasonic, Fujitsu, and even Japan-only brands I have never heard of often have their logo and corporate motto in English, often announced at the end of the commercial in English. Then there are shops and businesses that use English words that, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, do not mean what they think it means. Plus, they pretty consistently use Roman numbers, despite the fact that there are Kanji equivalents.