Poisonous Bookworm's Blog

We travelled with Finnair via Helsinki (if you like Moomin do not miss out this opportunity ^_^). It went well, the economy class was tolerable and the selection of films etc was correct (it is the same however for the month, so we had the same on the return flight). The food was not bad.
At the airport, we were lucky the swine flu didn’t add a lot of formalities. We got our luggage without problems and without much delay. We then went to exchange our Japan rail passes then had to go to the ticket office ask for our first tickets – Narita express to Tokyo.
In JR trains you do not have a buffet/bar coach like we do in the UK or France but they have ladies passing through the aisles regularly with their small chariots.
We had thought of spending a few hours in Tokyo before going north, but we were tired and decided to keep travelling. We took the Shinkansen to Sendai, left the heavy luggage in coin lockers and visited a little. We went to the Zuiho Den mausoleum (pictures below,and in the previous post), where we were met for the first time with a nice flight of steps to reach our destination. As we were to discover, sacred places in Japan are often put on heights, in the middle of a forest. That creates a nice atmosphere but does not make it very friendly to older, non-sportive Western people.
We then came back to the station to get back our luggage and went to our hotel, found (like most of them) via the Japanese Inn Group.
Very traditional room, with sliding doors, paper windows…and of course, futons and yukatas. That was also our first experience of japanese baths! At the beginning of this trip, we were a little awkward to bathe in common (Western Europe is so prudish !), but you do get used to it quickly. It is only embarassing as you make it!

First day lessons:
- all signs, announcements etc are both in Japanese and English, which makes it really easy to find what you need
- bathing in front of other people is not as embarassing as you may fear (and I am far from having the perfect body!)
- be prepared to face quite a number of steps during your trip
- JR staff, if you do not ask them otherwise, will give you tickets for the next train. You might be surprised of how little time they allow for changes (once we had only 5 minutes!), but their rail service is VERY reliable and we have had no issues on the 20-something train journeys we had during our trip
- in most trains, range of seats can be turned around so you can always face the direction of travel, or create squares if you travel in groups. Nice consequence: you have a lot of spaces for the legs!
- except for the Narita express, the trains are not built to accommodate large pieces of luggage. Japanese people travel light; if you cannot raise or fit your luggage in the overhead storage then you will have to keep it in your feet. I was happy to only have cabin-sized pieces of luggage!