Choo Choo to Takefu

Six hours on three different trains to cover a good portion of Honshu Island. Started at Shirakawa at 10:15 AM Wednesday (That's 6:15PM Tuesday in Oregon). Rode the bullet train south to Tokyo. One hour layover, then another bullet train through Yokohama & Nagoya. End of the bullet train line was a little nowhere town called Maibara (Google Earth couldn't find it). Nine minutes to move self & luggage to next train. NOT a bullet train, but a little swaying happy-go-pukey that took me the rest of the way to Takefu. I will take most of this same trip in reverse on May 9, ending up at Narita Airport with a nine hour flight to PDX to look forward to.

I had my hiking GPS with me, so I was able to follow the progress of the trip as I travelled. The GPS indicated an average speed of around 170 for the bullet train segments. Did I mention that these trains don't slow down when passing through a station if it's not a scheduled stop? I had just arrived on the platform and had my back to the tracks when one blasted through. No noise until it's right next to you. Then it makes a hell of a lot of noise. My digital camera can take low quality videos, so here's what the next one looked like:

Shirakawa Station

Unfortunately, not much of Tokyo is visible approaching or leaving Tokyo Station. Just lots & lots of suburbs and low rise buildings. My boss & I arrived at the station around noon, and it was still very crowded. We had an hour to kill, so we had lunch & did some people watching. The outbound train was nearly deserted, so I had my pick of seats, and plenty of room to strech out. I took a couple more videos on the trip. Here's some rural area between Yokohama & Nagoya:

blurry countryside

Finally, here's our train leaving Nagoya Station:

Nagoya

The hotel is within 100 ft of the train station, so I was able to get settled very quickly. Next up is getting to the Takefu plant tomorrow, then Kyoto on Sunday. The Vancouver site interpreter will be in town, and is interested in a Kyoto trip, so I'll have a native speaker along for the ride. Should make life much easier.