Japan Trip, Oct 2006 - Travelling on train, Japanese style!

Train traveling in Japan is relatively easy. Although I was told by my UK collegue that they had great difficulty in matching up the station names to their guideboook, I have the advantage of being able to read kanji (Chinese characters). It has made my life much easier. When I make a booking, I just write down the name of the destination and tell the assistants what time we want to travel. Then they would issue the tickets for us. It also helps that we had a train travel pass, so we don't have to worry about paying the wrong fare.

The most difficult part is finding the right platform. But people are generally helpful and if you show them your tickets, they would offer directions to the platform. And if you have missed your train, there is always the next one. The trains between the larger cities and town are quite frequent.

When traveling longer distance, it is common to bring your own 'take-away meal' (bento). We saw a family sharing a few bentos on one train trip and subsequently decided we should follow suit in the future.

So, on the following trip, we bought an eel bento to share between us. It's only small because we travelling to another city for lunch. But still, it was an authentic 'Japanese experience'! hahaha