Shinkansen: Traveling in Style

Our trip to Kyoto last weekend also marked our first time on the Shinkansen (新幹線), the world's oldest and busiest high-speed rail network.

Known to foreigners as the bullet train, as of last spring the Shinkansen (literally, "new trunk line") runs all the way from Kagoshima in southern Kyushu to Hachinohe, near the northern tip of Honshu. It's hands down the most convenient way to get between cities on any given line: door-to-door, it beats most flights, and the stations are a lot closer to town. As for driving, it's not even close: 8.5 hours on the road, versus less than 3 on the train, and not a whole lot of savings after you pay those astronomical Japanese highway tolls.

Plus, it's an awesome machine.

Check out these videos of how swift and smooth they are pulling in and out of the station. (Remember, e-mail subscribers - for videos, you need to click through to the blog.)

Even cooler? The fact that the Shinkansen doesn't depend on any single technology. In other words, it's not one super-awesome feat of engineering, it's dozens, plus a few feats of logistics, to boot. The result is that you can walk into any major train station on one of the Shinkansen lines, buy a ticket, board a train within about 10 minutes, and be at your destination in a few hours. Isn't the future grand?

Note: the Shinkansen ticketing system is sadly much less futuristic. Long story short, I had two $250 pieces of paper in my pocket for the better part of a week. Tickets like that should be at least a little more secure than cash!

The Christmas Spirit: A gift for my brother

Dear Jim,

As you know, we are currently experiencing an armistice in an escalating war of who can give each other the worst possible gifts. I fired the opening shots when Justin and I lived in Korea, and I gave you a pink necktie with rhinestone paisleys. You retaliated by wearing the tie to church and getting cast in the Easter pageant. I then upped my game with a boxed set of underwear by the Korean brand "Body Gay." You saw that and raised by bringing me back a "Bush Lover" shirt from South Africa. At that point we declared a truce.

Well, my dear brother, TRUCE NO MORE. I have in my hands the worst possible Christmas gift, dredged from the seedy depths of this classy-on-the-surface archipelago. If our struggle is World War II, this gift is Stalingrad. (I'm the Russians.) If this is the Cold War, I'm thwarting your blockade of the Federal Republic of Germany by landing one plane every thirty-six seconds in West Berlin. (You're the Russians this time.) This gift is the apotheosis of gift horribleness.

How horrible is this gift? I bought it Sunday at the flea market, and the vendors appeared genuinely distressed to discover that they actually possessed this item for sale. They tried to convince me that I couldn't possibly want this item and suggested an alternate purchase. They charged me a dollar and felt guilty about it. I've been cleaning it for twenty minutes and it's still not clean.

What is it? Oh, my dear brother, that is for Christmas morning to know, and you to regret finding out!

YOUR MOVE.

Yours,

Sister

(Link) Fukuoka: The Magical Mystery Tour

It turns out that, by default, Blogger dates posts to when you first edit them, not when you hit "publish." This creates some problems when, out of a delicate blend of bafflement and sheer laziness, you sit on a long post for nearly a month.

Behold: The Magical Mystery Tour, the story of how we came to play rock-paper-scissors with the mayor.

Posted today, but dated to October 30, 2011.

Kyoto Itinerary

Nana and I thought it might be a good idea to start posting itineraries for our trips. (Meaning that we'll probably do this once, or maybe twice, then forget about it entirely.)

So here's how we spent our Autumn vacation. I can't guarantee we'll write a post on each of these, but when we do post, we'll add a link below.

Saturday


Morning: Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto
Early Afternoon: Nishiki Food Market
Late Afternoon: Kyoto Museum - special exhibit on kimono

Sunday


Morning: Philosopher's Walk and Temples, Northern Higashiyama
Afternoon: Geisha Dress-Up, Gion
Evening: Dinner at Goya, an Okinawan fusion restaurant

Monday

Morning: Toji Temple Flea Market
Afternoon: Temples, Southern Higashiyama
Evening: Kaiseki (Japanese haute cuisine)

Tuesday

Morning: Temples, Arashiyama
Early Afternoon: Arashiyama Monkey Park
Late Afternoon: Shijo Castle
Evening: Shinkansen to Fukuoka

Good and bad news

The good news: We are home safe and sound from Kyoto.

The bad news: Justin left me for a geisha.

PAINTED HUSSY.

Off to Kyoto; And, Expensive Pieces of Paper

We're heading off to Kyoto tomorrow, for four days of supremely dorky sightseeing. I'm hoping to finish a nice, long post about our last wacky excursion by the time we go, but I can make no guarantees.

In the meantime, I've spent half this week carrying two very expensive pieces of paper in my wallet: shinkansen (bullet train) tickets costing about $250 each. Yes, ticketing on Japanese trains is entirely done entirely with paper. Of course, most people buy their train tickets right before boarding, as trains run so frequently that there's almost always a seat. But this weekend is a major travel holiday, so we wanted to get ours a few days in advance.

Now, I don't know why carrying $500 in train tickets bothers me so much when I regularly carry a lot more than that in cash. (When in Rome.) But, boy, it does!

Wednesday Weirdness: A Life-Size Inflatable Panda With Boxing Gloves and a Murderous Glint in His Eye

It turns out not a single part of that post title was a lie. Just when you think you understand Japan, it gives you something like this . . . !