Showing posts sorted by relevance for query rikuu sai. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query rikuu sai. Sort by date Show all posts

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.

Thursday, 22 March 2012

Seishun 18 rules for happy travel, a refresher course

The perspective on the way up
(when I took a later train than I had printed out.)

Rule number one of seishun 18 kippu travel is have a copy of the timetable that you've planned. There is a very good reason for this: trains are irregular.  You need to know which train to catch when there are various ways of getting to the same destination. Missing a train can be the difference between arriving today or arriving tomorrow. Furthermore the difference between catching a rapid and a local can be the difference between having a little time to buy something to eat and and not eating all day.  Rule number two is to have food to minimize the inconvenience of messing up rule one.  Three is having a mobile phone or JR timetable that enables one to scout alternative options.  .... Rule number 4 is having one's walled close to the top when one is changing trains so that one can buy emergency supplies - tissues, food, a drink in the time between trains rather than spending the precious minutes trying to find one's wallet in the bottom of one's bag.

If rule number one is observed other rules are redundant.



The perspective on the way back.

Rule number one ceases to apply where JR doesn't keep to the timetable....
Fortunately I had my mobile phone, a half used recharging battery and my wits about me as arrived in Sakata to a message that passengers for the Rikuu sai sen would transfer to a bus as the train wasn't running - no explanation.  It mean 40 min extra travelling time to Shinjo, thwarting my plan to go Shinjo-Nyuko Onsen- Kogota on the Rikuu tou line.... to have taken this would have mean an overnight stop and arriving the following morning....I ended up taking the Ou sen back to Fukushima, coming back the same way I went.  But I guess the whole point is that the tickets are cheap not convenient.

I am sending the remaining three days to the PIL for a day trip with their neighbour - all the trains there are local trains, so it works out well for them.

The obligatory JR timetable - I use a mobile
A street not far from Sakata


The bus replacing the Riku u sai line between Sakata and Shinjo

 

Thursday, 14 March 2013

Another Seishun 18 trip north

I am back from Akita... not via Niigata as I'd planned, but perhaps later in the holiday.

My last post that I realised after I posted it had no English translations.. and didn't make sense entirely in Japanese either as part of the route overlapped.

I went up via the Tohoku Honsen as far as Kogota, and then to the Japan Sea side via the Rikuu Tou line to Shinjo, the Rikuu Sai line to Sakata, the Uetsu line to Akita and the Ou line to Odate.
It involved 11 changes.

The trip is long - 16 hours or so, depending on the route -  and at times seems rather arduous and I'm not very good at using time on the train productively,   but the seishun 18 has two major benefits.

1) It's cheap.  A round trip by Shinkansen is about $350 and takes 6 hours or so.  The seishun 18 works out at $25 or so for one day's unlimited travel. If I have the time (as in the long holidays) it makes more sense than going by Shinkansen.

2) The scenery is so much better.   I've made a series of videos. Katsu, a friend in Kyoto suggested ages ago that I take video of the train lines; with an i pad it has become much more feasible, though I didn't think of that until the return trip.

Videos to follow



View akabane odate rail map in a larger map

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

The long road back - Ou Honsen & Tohoku Honsen

The road back was similar to the way up, but the connections far less convenient. The Ou line from Odate was late, but they held the Nairiku sen so that transfering passengers could catch it. In Kakunodate also it was an easy change with 5 minutes between trains.  From there, the connections involved long waits.
An hour at Omagari, an hour at Shinjo, an hour at Yamagata and half an hour at Yonezawa. From Fukushima back to Tokyo connection times were minimal.

One hour is not long enough to see much, and too long to be enjoyable. The notable exception is Yonezawa where they have a standing soba counter in the station!
Near Yuzawa (Akita)
The view from Shinjo station


The Ou sen terminates and returns to Akita
Between Yonezawa and Yamagata is Takahata
which has an onsen at the station! 

Congratulations to the Rikuu Sai train line 100 years!
And a sign to welcome you to Yamagata -
the character is the prefecture mascot.


At Yonezawa - Fukushima bound



The train from Fukushima went direct to Kuroiso
with no change in Koriyama

From Kuroiso to Utsunomiya

Almost home...
After leaving before 7, I arrived back in Tokyo at 11.48



Thursday, 29 March 2012

The trip back

Hachirogata, on the Odate side of Akita City. It used to be
Japan's second biggest lake but was reclaimed post war to
have space for rice farming. The government now pays farmers
not to farm.  The area is unusual for its scope of its flatness and the
straight lines that divide the rice fields. Both features have contributed
to making it Japan's centre for solar car trials. (though not their
development)
The Japan Sea Coast from the train
 
Lots of towns have enormous public buildings - often local govt.
that are much more imposing than any other building in town.
I guess it's a contemporary Japanese equivalent to a
mediaeval church in a European village....
Not very crowded
The Uetsu sen follows along the coast with occasional inland
meanderings.
The Coast


The bus to replace the Rikuu sai sen going east from Sakata.
Apparently JR is not required to give seishun 18 ticket holders
alternative transport in the event that the trains aren't running. 
I am very glad though that they did.
There are quite a lot of windmills for power generation in the
area - that said I am not sure I would be impressed with living in
a "windy town" as Tachikawa has labelled itself.
Along the Mogami gawa from the bus - this part has been dammed.
Shinjo station - cold.
          After missing my connection due to the substitute bus, it was so
tempting to catch a Shinkansen from Shinjo... I restrained myself and
saved myself more than 12,000 yen.
Snow on the tracks always impresses me.

Travelling south from Shinjo
The long road home
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Friday, 23 March 2012

yamagata and beyond


  

More snow on the way to Shinjo


 
Construction of a new highway
Fashion I didn't really get
Shinjo and transfer to the Rikuu sai line
The countryside between Shinjo and Sakata is stunning.
 
 
 
Change at Sakata to the Uetsu line to Akita city
Chokkai san can kind of sort of be made out a bit if you try hard.
Akita city change for Odate.
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