Today was a day of train rides. Up early for breakfast, off to Osaka Station for the 5 minute ride to Shin-Osaka, the shinkansen station. Nice and early so a bit of hanging round until our booked train was ready to leave. It was interesting watching the shinkansens come and go. A through shinkansen stops for only a minute or so. I suspect shinkansen drivers are considered somewhat elite compared to ordinary trains' drivers. They wear airline pilot uniforms, and carry important briefcases and folders. The cabin crew, all women, are also smartly kitted-out. We haven't booked many trains but had booked both of today's, the first because it will be our 2nd-longest ride, and the second because it is a popular excursion train.
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| Some of the choices for bento boxes |
The trip in the shinkansen down Honshu Island to Kyushu Island was almost disappointingly quick. About 700km in about 3 hours! Very smooth and easy. Not great scenery along the way. An extraordinary amount of it is in tunnels, and very little was close to the coast. We dined on bento boxes for a slightly early lunch, then into Kumamoto where we took a near-vintage tramcar into the city to drop our bags off.
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| Our rather beautiful lunch-boxes, mine had 28 different ingredients. |
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| Unfortunately it's a blurry photo |
Back to Kumamoto station, this time on foot, to take the A-Train. This is an older train which has been refitted in Art Deco/jazz style, hence the A-Train name which is apparently a well-known jazz tune from New York. It really was rather nice inside. To keep in the spirit of the train, we had a whisky highball each - mixed spirits in Japan are just the cost of a beer.
A nice ride along the coast to the little port town of Misumi where we climbed up a strage conical tower for the view. A very good pianist inside was playing and being photographed for something.
Before getting back on the train we stopped at a tiny coffee van. The Japanese owner had hand-converted one of the tiny kei-car vans into a mobile coffee wagon, and was offering pour-over coffees. We got chatting to him, and it turned out he had visited New Zealand.
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| It was lovely chatting with the barista. |
Back on the train, back to Kumamoto and checked in about 5:30pm. Feeling a bit tired, so out not too long afterwards for a meal. Another place with a ticket machine, but this time with an "English" button which made things a little easier. Two nice meals, with free top-ups of water, tea and even rice, the latter from a large machine where you chose the number of extra grams you wanted, pressed go, and got the appropriate sized lump.
We arrive at the start of our walk in just two days' time. Our 2-week JR Pass seems to have disappeared in no time at all.
