Friday 15 March 2013

On the way up - seishun 18





Early morning in Akabane


I wasn't the only  one thinking it was early... fortunately I was
going against the traffic.

Tochigi somewhere





Kooriyama in Fukushima


The Shinkansen line in the background. Somewhere near Sendai

The trains get crowded around the major centres
                                       

The train to Nyuko onsen

Nyoko onsen - pretty, a lot of snow, but has seen better days.

like this

glad I'm not doing the shovelling there..

or there

Rikuu Tou sen scenery

Rikuu Tou line scenery.

Not much grave visiting can be done there...
the graves are barely sticking out of the snow.

Rikuu sai line between Shinjo and Sakata

Uetsu line from Sakata... not very many passengers.
 I was fortunate to get a seat on the line to Odate, but the two car train is pretty well empty by the time it gets to Odate, the terminal station.

2 comments:

Rurousha said...

Respect and admiration! If I had to attempt this, with all these changes, in my very limited Japanese, I would end up in ... oh help ... probably North Korea.

What luggage did you have? Small suitcase? Backpack?

Cecilia said...

You underestimate yourself and JR Ru!
Every connection, except the first at Akabane was the terminal station. Jorudan.co.jp lets you search for seishun 18 routes (excludes trains with separate express fares and private lines). It doesn't do it in English, unfortunately, but it does go through translation sites satisfactorily.
There is a caveat that you need to be awake at the terminal station as the changes can be tight.
I had a small backpack and a trolley bag mostly of omiyage... I left the trolley bag up there and came back with the backpack only.

It's very cheap, and very easy :)
The ideal world would be going on the Shinkansen as far as Fukushima and then using local lines - the Utsunomiya sen in particular has dreary scenery.