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June 4, 2001 - The Day the Trains
Outsmarted Us, Twice
We woke up early again this morning, this time on purpose
rather than by accident.
The first thing I did was look at the dresser and ask
myself, "Why did I buy kimchee-flavor ramen?" The ramen turned out to be not
too bad, much better than its name implied.
If I'd had my first choice, we'd have spent more days in
Japan, and spent them touring around the country, rather than based in Tokyo.
Certainly we needed to spend a few days in Tokyo to start out, but I was
itching to see the country outside the city.
Today was our last full day in Japan and so we headed out of
town by train. Our choices were Mt. Fuji and Nikko. Both are popular scenic
destinations viable as day trips from Tokyo. The near-perfect volcanic cone of
Fuji-San is the most well known image of Japan the world over, while Nikko is a
popular tourist spot known for its natural beauty and ancient shrines.
Ancient shrines only interest me in passing, so it was down
to the natural surroundings. Based entirely on second-hand information and with
a lot of gnashing of teeth, we opted to go to Nikko rather than to Mt. Fuji.
My trusty Lonely Planet Japan guide gave us the "best"
choices for reaching Nikko. Being budget-minded, we headed by subway to
Asakusa. Both Ikebukuro and Asakusa are at ends of the Tokyo subway lines. My
observation is that these are jump off points for the regular train system
where legions of salarymen commute each day to and from work.
The first train out to Nikko was shortly after 6:00AM. We
hoped to catch the earliest train possible so that we'd get out of Tokyo before
the subway rush hour, and to have the most possible time in Nikko before
returning - again wishing to avoid the rush, which we weren't really sure when
it began and ended.
Our train choices were a regular train and a "limited
express". The limited express was only 20 minutes faster to Nikko and twice as
expensive. Therefore, it only made sense to travel by regular train.
This is where things got tricky. The subways were pretty
easy to navigate and fairly well labeled in English. The train station at
Asakusa wasn't so easy. The ticketing booths (most are automated kiosks) were
on the ground floor, the trains on the upper level. We made a few trips up and
down trying to figure out exactly what we wanted to buy tickets for.
On one of our trips back down the stairs, the first commuter
train of the morning arrived behind us. As we were walking down the steps I saw
the security guard look behind me, grab his colleague by the arm and pull him
out of the way. The station had been almost deserted up to this point, but,
suddenly, behind me, there arose such a clatter. I turned and was almost
flattened by a wave of people running at full tilt trying to reach the subway
in the basement. Luckily we got to the side just in time.
In the end, we opted for the limited express train, because
the kiosks had an English button and we could figure out how to work them...
sort of.
Navigating the buttons was fairly straightforward. It was a
kiosk ONLY for limited express trains. First it declared that it was a limited
express train and gave us a choice between the next two departing limited
express trains. Next it asked how many seats we required, and then asked if we
preferred smoking or non-smoking. AT this point the kiosk told us that there
were seats available on our selected train.
This is where the problems began. It gave us one last choice
that perplexed us.
"Limited Express Ticket" or "Limited Express Ticket and
Railway Ticket" - the later being twice as expensive as the former. Maybe we
were just being dumb, or the terse wording wasn't descriptive enough or maybe
Lonely Planet hadn't explained this one well enough, but we could not figure
out why we would want to buy two tickets instead of just the limited express
ticket.
We found out as we tried to board the train... at the
turnstile the machine passed our tickets through normally and promptly rejected
us. (Well, actually, it rejected Chu-Wan who was going first.) The helpful
train station person came up to her and started talking to her in Japanese. She
tried her dumbstruck look to no avail. In broken English he explained, "This is
Limited Express Train Ticket. Need two." This wasn't very helpful as we were
holding a ticket for the train - which was boarding as we spoke. He pointed us
back to the downstairs ticketing area and we hoped the people manning the booth
would be able to explain better.
Not really, but in the end we just bought what they told us
and they let us get on the train.
In the end, I finally figured out that for somewhat
convoluted reasons we needed to buy an ordinary train ticket to Nikko and then
purchase an "upgrade" to the limited express ticket. Presumably someone might
have a railpass or other pre-purchased ticket and therefore might have reason
just to want to buy the "limited express ticket." It just wasn't evidently
clear to us at the time.
Feeling suitably stupid we sat back and enjoyed the 1hr
50m-train ride.
 The ride was really nice; the train was smooth, clean,
comfortable and had western toilets - everything I expect in a train.
About 1 hour out from the station we were still pulling
through "city", although much more rural in feel - no high-rises, some rice
fields. It was about here that I saw a Pizza-La restaurant and I realized I
hadn't yet had pizza in Japan. Horrified I pulled out the Lonely Planet guide,
which I was still a little ticked off at for not properly explaining the whole
Limited Express thing, and started looking for pizza places near our hotel.
None. Not one. I had certainly identified several Shakey's
Pizza places on the city maps before I'd left - now I could not find one. Then
it hit me: the day before leaving the States I bought the 2000 edition of
Lonely Planet Japan, replacing my older 1998 edition - thinking that the most
recent edition would be more helpful in locating things. I'd been hoist by my
own petard! Somewhere in the editorial changes from 1998 to 2000 they decided
to drop pizza places! This was going to make my primary objective of eating
pizza everywhere in the world much more difficult.
While I contemplated the wording of my forthcoming letter of
complaint to the editorial staff of Lonely Planet guides the broad, flat Kanto
plain gave way to mountains.
Some much quoted statistics: Japan occupies the same sized
space as California, but because most of the islands are almost tragically
mountainous, only 30% is habitable. Most of the population inhabits the Kanto
plain where Tokyo is situated, but outside that area the terrain really gets
rough.
 We almost
immediately pushed into mixed pine forest and before long we pulled into the
town of Nikko.
We picked up a map at the train station and headed out on
foot in the same direction as the other tourists and tour busses. At one point
9 tour busses passed up one after the other in a sort of tourist wagon train.
Walking, it was easy to tell it was uphill all the way.
We reached the river and the sacred bridge, which is under
reconstruction and completely obscured from view. A plaque declared this the
entrance to the Nikko World Heritage area for shrines and such.
At the top of a stiff bit of stairs was the ticket booth to
see the shrines. 900 yen for a combo ticket, not all that much, really, but we
decided to go hiking in the woods instead. Some other travelers can report the
shrines.
We had a trail guide (also picked up at the train station)
and we decided to try a mountain trail that ultimately led back to the train
station. As walked through more of the town, we just couldn't find the darn
trail, which should have been obvious.
 By
now I was hungry and the prospects of pizza in Nikko looked pretty grim, so it
was time to bite the bullet and eat at a "real" Japanese restaurant. We passed
a small family restaurant (with the obligatory plastic food out front) and,
seeing that they served traditional Japanese food I decided that Chu-Wan could
at last stop and have what she wanted. (I was not being entirely selfless, I
also saw that they served tonkatsu, which is a breaded pork chop. I quite enjoy
tonkatsu, so Chu-Wan could indulge herself in Japanese food and I could eat
something I also enjoy.)
She had the pork chop, too. I couldn't believe it.
That said, it was very tasty, and came with a lot of side
dishes. I should hope it was tasty, it was 1,200 yen (US$ 10) each.
 Refreshed and re-energized we continued on until it was obvious we
had totally missed the trailhead. We were at the turn off for Jakko no
Tori (Jakko Waterfall), which doesn't appear to be a widely publicized
tourist destination and decided that would be our target.
2.5 Km (uphill) later we arrived at a small but tranquil
waterfall in the beautiful forest, totally devoid of other people. Despite
being a hot, cloudless day, the water was almost freezing and we spent time
just relaxing, playing in the water and enjoying the day.
Ultimately we had to leave and return to Tokyo. At least the
walk back to the train station was all downhill.
 I
did some calculations with the GPS and decided that we'd walked between 8 and
10 km, much of it at an 8% grade. We were very tired when we got back to the
station at 2:30.
This time we knew how to work the train system. The Limited
Express Kiosk told us the next limited express was leaving at 2:49. At 1hr 50m
back to Tokyo we'd be there by 4:40Pm and back to Ikebukuro by about 5:20,
hopefully before rush hour got going full blast. (Assuming, of course, that
rush hour began at 5:00PM.)
We bought our two tickets each. The tickets are printed by
the kiosk on demand and, when you pick the right button, only produce one
"ticket." The tickets are in Kanji, but fortunately, Chu-Wan was able to read
that and the tickets did indeed say "Nikko to Asakusa." One odd thing though:
the ticket said the train was at 2:58PM, not 2:49PM.
 We just
assumed this was because the train might be running behind schedule and since
the ticket is printed on demand would have the most current information on it.
I checked the gate and the board said it was gate 1. A rickety old train sat at
gate one - not a limited express, certainly it did not contain enough cars or
seats to have our reserved seats on it.
Chu-Wan checked with the ticketmaster, who confirmed it was
on gate 1, "next train," she said.
So, we sat down waiting for the train currently sitting at
gate 1 to leave and for the "next train" to arrive. At 2:49 the train at gate 1
pulled out. Then the stationmaster came over and asked to see our tickets. He
pointed at the departing train, "That was you train."
"But this ticket says 2:58!" "Yes, that was you train." "But
it's not 2:58!"
"No, you change train."
"But it says 2:58."
"You change train at 2:58. Two stop."
This wasn't getting us anywhere, so we tried making "oh we
feel dumb, what are we going to do now?" noises. He took our tickets, ran back
to the station, and brought us new ones (and 200 yen change back each, too) and
kept an eye on us until we got on the next train. Explaining again, "You change
train. Two stops."
We certainly hoped this would be simple enough, we'd had
enough trouble with trains today.
We didn't have any further trouble, but between the delay in
catching the train and the delay from switching trains we were back to Asakusa
much later than we hoped, in fact, we didn't get into the subway system until
about 5:30PM. We had to take the subway inbound from Asakusa to Ginza, which we
figured would be packed out outbound, but at Ginza we had to swap trains and
start heading back outwards towards Ikebukuro, which is where we thought we
might get jammed. If the station at Ginza was really a madhouse, I was willing
to spend a few hours shopping on the Ginza rather than experience rush hour
first hand.
Ginza wasn't busy though, so we decided to make the trip
immediately. At each stop heading out more and more people got on, and nobody
got off. We had seats, which was good, but by the end of the line we would not
have been able to get out of them expect that everyone on the train got off. We
arrived at exactly 6:00PM. I suspect the next train to disembark was even more
crowded - we got out of the subway station as quickly as possible.
We were exhausted from the day's excursion and rested in the
hotel for a while. While we rested, I broke out the English language yellow
pages looking for pizza restaurants. I noticed one thing the same about Japan
and everywhere else I've ever traveled. If you're in a hotel room and you let
the phone book flip open to wherever it wants to, it always opens to escort
services. You'd think they'd open to pizza places, but no. Tokyo addresses are
not for mere mortals to comprehend and I gave up my vain hope of finding pizza
that way.
We made one last venture out to buy bread and other snacks
for tomorrow and I went prowling around the streets once more in hopes of
stumbling across a pizza restaurant. I had no luck whatsoever and finally,
tired and hungry, I passed a Subway sandwich shop and stopped for a submarine
sandwich. The Pizzahound struck out in Tokyo.
Tomorrow we have to catch the 6:00AM shuttle bus back to the
airport to catch our flight to Taipei. There looks to be no hope of finding
pizza before we leave. |
