The Far East: Day 15

On Thursday, the overcast humid air was replaced by somewhat cooler and clearer air, bringing with it some nice sunshine but leaving temperatures at a very pleasant 24C. To take advantage of the weather, Jonathan and I headed out of Tokyo to the town of Nikko, about 90 miles north of the city.  

Joban line, 1025 Minami-Senju to Ueno

Tohoku Shinkansen, Yamabiki 49: 1046 Ueno to Utsunomiya, arr 1130

By way of contrast to the linear Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen, the Shinkansen to the north of Japan's main island of Honshu has no fewer than five separate branches: the Tohoku, Akita, Yamagata, Joetsu and Nagano Shinkansen each serve various cities in the north of the island. It is hard, however, to dispute the notion that the Tohoku Shinkansen is the main route, being the longest and reaching nearly all the way to Hokkaido, the main island in the north of Japan.

We used just 65 miles of this complicated network to get to Utsonomiya, where we would change for Nikko. The line north out of Tokyo was built in 1982; it runs partially underground to get out of the city via Ueno station, the main station for suburban trains to the northern suburbs. Being newer, it offers up a higher maximum speed of 300kph instead of 270kph, which doesn't feel all that much faster but is nice to know.

Nikko Line, local train: 1139 Utsunomiya to Nikko, arr c1224

At Utsonomiya, 65 miles north of Tokyo, we made a nine-minute connection to a local train to Nikko. The metropolis of Tokyo sprawls nearly as far as Utsonomiya - there was little countryside to interrupt our journey - but the branch line was definitely more rural in feel, being single-track with passing loops in each station, of which there were six in our 25-mile, 45-minute journey. It was very nice to get out of the city for a while - it can get a bit oppressive after a while, especially given how many people there are in Japan.

Oddly, though, it appears that even Nikko has commuters to Tokyo; while our route is not considered part of the Tokyo network, there is an alternative route to Nikko which is part of the Tokyo Metro (subway). The Metro, however, is not included in the price of the JR Pass.

Nikko is home to a world heritage site consisting of a number of beautiful shrines set in a national park surrounded by mountains. After a 20-minute walk uphill from the station, you come to the beautiful Shin-kyo bridge, which points the way up to the Rinno-ji, a Buddhist temple, and Tosho-gu, an unusually ostentatious Shinto shrine. A combination ticket for ¥1000 (about £8) provides good value for all the main sights.

The Tosho-gu shrine was established in 1634 by Tokugawa Iemitsu in honour of his grandfather Tokugawa Ieyasu, who died in 1616. Its dazzling beauty stands as a testament to the wealth of the Tokugawa dynasty. Unlike most Shinto shrines, it is fabulously decorated in gold leaf and bright red paint, and has to be seen to be believed. As, in fact, do the crowds: if you thought hoards of Japanese tourists frequenting European tourist sites was bad, you should see them when they visit their own tourist sites. 

Two more shrines lie adjacent to Tosho-gu, namely Futarasan-jinja and Taiyuin-byo, neither of which are as extravagant, nor are they as touristy. In fact, after Tosho-gu they came as a bit of a relief. The buddhist temple of Rinno-ji and its large hall of Sanbutsu-do, which hosts three giant gilded statues, rounded off an excellent afternoon.

We hadn't been hungry when we started visiting the shrines, but getting there was uphill so we decided not to go down until we'd seen everything. As a result it was about 4pm by the time we finally got some lunch, which was chicken and meat skewers accompanied by rice and noodles. After that, we headed back down the hill and caught our train back to Tokyo: 

Nikko Line, local train: 1707 Nikko to Utsunomiya, arr 1749

Tohoku Shinkansen, Max Yamabiki 122: 1758 Utsunomiya to Tokyo, arr 1848

Again, a nine-minute connection in Utsonomiya. It is a testament to the network that we could comfortably make a very short connection with a relatively long walk in an unfamiliar station with no fuss whatsoever. Imagine doing that at somewhere like Liverpool Lime Street. The key difference is that, as a rule, each line has its own platform, which is signposted as such: as such you only usually need to check departure boards when there's more than one platform or to find out exactly when the next train leaves.

Our train back from Utsonomiya turned out to be a double-decker train. The British tracks don't have big enough tunnels to allow for double-decker trains, but the Japanese ones do, and they are imposingly big: the trains are a full metre taller than normal, and the seats on the upper deck are 3+3 with no loss of space - such is the width of the cabin. Adding the staircases to permit access does reduce the number of seats in each deck, but not so much that the effect of having two decks is lost: double-decker trains typically have up to 50% more seats than a single-decker train of the same length.

We had intended to go back to the hostel before heading on to the Tokyo Tower, but we hadn't planned on starting so late or staying so long in Nikko. So we headed directly to the Tokyo Tower: 
 
Yamanote line, 1857 Tokyo to Hamamatsucho

The Tokyo Tower is a 333m high copy of the Eiffel Tower built in 1958 in an era when the Japanese were producing cheap copies of everything European; it actually manages to be a few metres taller than its French counterpart. We got up to the 150m-high observation deck just as dusk was fading.

Views from tall buildings in cities are always nice, but they're always much of a muchness: one city doesn't look that different to any other city. At least, that's true in the daytime.

At night, though, Tokyo's neon lights make for a spectacle that no other city can match. The moonlight over the Rainbow Bridge in the distance made for a stunning view. I was glad that I'd bought a new lens for my camera that was able to cope with low light a month or so before I left: being able to take hand-held shots in near-darkness is much better than having to use a makeshift tripod, and I have some hopefully rather good photos (which I can't do anything with until I get home) 

After that, we headed back to the hostel: 

Yamanote line, 2108 Hamamatsucho to Ueno
Joban line, 2133 Ueno to Minami-Senju

We popped out again to get some food, after a rather long day, in a Japanese fast food restaurant: the ramen was alright, but a bit salty. We ended up watching most of the Italy-Slovakia game, which turned out to be a really good game - I was not expecting Italy to go out, and it was made all the more hilarious by the reactions of the Italian staying in our hostel.

Between that and the insane Isner vs. Mahut game at Wimbledon, we eventually got to bed at about 1am, later than planned, ready for our last full day in Tokyo, and Jon's last full day in Japan.