Not My Base - Hussein Duvigneau

Finally, I have before me, some physical evidence of this summer’s adventure. On my desk is an exchange order for a 21-day rail pass, which allows free travel and seat reservation on any Japanese train, including the Shinkansen (bullet trains), apart from the Nozomi; These are the trains which directly connect the major cities, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo. They don’t travel much faster than the other Shinkansen, but the fact you don’t have to switch trains speeds up the journey times. I get the feeling this is because the Japanese want to reserve the high-speed intercity trains for businessmen. When we land as Kansai airport, the first thing we have to do is find the ticket office and collect the pass, using the exchange order. Luckily enough, the pass comes with maps of every station and where to find said offices.

The Japan Railways Group quotes the pass at ¥57,700 (Yen), which at time of writing, equates to £377, but adding VAT and the fact it’s actually flown in from an office in Australia, hence two currency conversions, brings this to £441 including P&P, meaning I’ve now spent slightly more than £900 on this trip and I’ve not even arrived yet. This may sound a lot, but the Japanese trains are notoriously expensive. For example, an average journey, such as Kyoto to Hiroshima would cost ¥11,290, or £74. Now considering we’ll be travelling almost every other day for three weeks, and some days may involve more than one journey, it suddenly becomes clear how much this is actually saving.

There are some journeys which will go on through the night. I learnt the benefits of this from travelling around Europe. Travelling through the night costs are as much as an expensive youth hostel, with the benefit of waking up in the morning where you want to be, rather than having to wake up, pay and book out of the youth hostel, and then waste the morning travelling to where you want to go. This means a careful selection (with much research) of the trains and timetables. A night train may arrive at your location at 5am, or take eight hours when a bullet train could make the journey in two. There’s also a big variance in prices and sleeping arrangements. Some trains offer a matted floor to sleep on, which are free with the pass, or beds, typically at ¥9500 with the pass (more than double without).

So the time came, I refreshed and refreshed across 1:29 to 1:30AM, (9:30AM Tokyo Time), waiting for the tickets to fly out to Amami Oshima to become available; refresh, still not available, refresh again, and, sold out. I was expecting a rush, but not to be gutted in a single instant. The question remains what to do now? Ferry’s are cheaper, but take 11 hours either direction, and we could be stranded on Amami for days before being able to get back to the mainland. To make matters worse, I’m away on holiday when the ferry tickets become available, and the process isn’t in English either. This is gonna be a tough one, but if it really comes to it, I’m sure we’ll be able to bribe a fisherman to take us out to a visible location.

You may have noticed while reading the plans, I was hesitant to use pronouns (I, We, Us), which made the writing awkward. The reason for this is because I wasn’t clear on if I was going by myself or a with a friend, Herman, who was still deciding if he liked my plans or not.

And then, this evening, I checked to see if the KLM prices were still dropping, but in-fact most of the flights had taken a huge hike, in some cases by over £100, so I told Herman the brown stuff may be about to hit the fan if we don’t act quick, and I think the sense of urgency may have been the decider for him. As for myself, despite initially planning to go alone, I’d got my hopes up so much about having a companion I was less enthusiastic about going solo. So, we did some final checks, and refusing to buy tickets unless he’d got a confirmed booking, I nagged at him a while, and, well, we now have tickets

The downer is that as I booked the tickets, I got a message saying that because someone else has just bought tickets for the flight, the price has risen for my own ticket. Dammit Herman!

The next rush now will be at 1:30am on either the 21st or 22nd of this month, depending on if we decide to fly out to Amami on the morning of or the night before the eclipse. The reason being that Japan’s domestic airline opens bookings at 9:30am two months in advance of the flight, and there’ll probably be 1000 other people wanting to make the same journey…

Unfinished, I’m still adding locations and details, but here’s the interactive map courtesy of Google, no more tacky lines drawn in MS Paint

Clicking on icons will give details, though I havent bothered filling most of the details in yet. Clicking on the lines will also give info on the times of trains we’ll be using to travel along them. If I accedentally leave a price in Yen and you’re confused, 10000Y is just less than £70.

Let me know how this map works out for you, with regards to integration on the website, for example, if it messes up the site on smaller resolutions.