Tag: train
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Japan on a Budget: Sapporo to Ueno on the Hokutosei
Having returned from Furano to Sapporo, I needed to get back to Tokyo in time to fly back home. There’s one simple and obvious way to do that: domestic flights from New Chitose airport to Haneda run just about every 30 minutes, take 90 minutes, and aren’t too expensive. Instead, I took a 16 hour long…
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Japan on a Budget: Hirosaki and Aomori
Inside the Hakkoda-Maru Aomori-ken sits at the very top of Honshu. Getting there on the train is as easy as you could hope: Shin-Aomori is the current terminus of the Tohoku Shinkansen, so you can leap on a Hayate service from Tokyo or, like me, catch it from Morioka, where the Akita mini-shinkansen line meets…
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Japan on a Budget: Tohoku by Train
Matsushima, near Sendai, Miyagi-ken I came back from last year’s trip around southern Honshu determined to work on my kanji and head back the next year. One year, one hundred and twenty kanji and three more terms of general study later, I was on a plane to Narita again. And this time, with something approaching…
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Japan on a budget, 3: Kyoto
(This is part of a guide to travelling Honshu on a moderate budget and in limited time. Click here for the whole series). I arrived in Kyoto on my second day, via Shinkansen from Tokyo. You arrive at the huge JR Kyoto station, from which you can link to the local JR lines, the private…
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Japan on a budget, 4: Northern Kansai
(This is part of a guide to travelling Honshu on a moderate budget and in limited time. Click here for the whole series). I didn’t really mean to go to the North coast of Kansai, but managed it anyhow. A national holiday fell on the Monday of my trip, and on the Saturday before every…
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Japan on a budget, 5: Hiroshima and MiyaJima
(This is part of a guide to travelling Honshu on a moderate budget and in limited time. Click here for the whole series). From Fukuchiyama I headed across to Hiroshima. If you’re heading out this way, be sure to reserve a seat on the Sakura Shinkansen from Shin-Osaka; I can only assume they put too…
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Japan on a budget, 6: Nara and Yokohama
(This is part of a guide to travelling Honshu on a moderate budget and in limited time. Click here for the whole series). Nara, the capital of Japan before even Kyoto, is all about the parkland, deer and temples. It’s a short train ride from Kyoto, so I rolled up early in the morning. If…
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SouthEastern SnowFail: The End
About a week ago I wrote to SouthEastern Railway’s Public Affairs Manager, asking him two questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no. I didn’t get a yes or no answer to either, and when I pushed for a straight answer to one of them the gentleman in question simply stopped replying…