Everybody Hearts Bullet Trains

You can tell a lot about a country from its trains. Consider, to stereotype wildly, the Germans (pride in efficiency and punctuality), the Dutch (cheerful utilitarianism), the Polish (working their way from the second world to the first), the Americans (they prefer cars). The same is true for the Japanese.

Most obviously, there's the impressive engineering of the shinkasen (bullet trains). Everybody loves the bullet trains. And the Japanese love to be cutting edge. The bullet trains have achieved engineering fame for Japan for the last fifty years. Cruising along at nearly 200 miles per hour, you may as well be standing still: there is no rocking, no swaying; no jostling or clicking or clacking. 

Which leads us to the most remarkable aspect of riding trains in Japan: QUIET. Not only is there no noticeable train noise on the shinkasen (except when entering or exiting tunnels), but there is absolutely no talking on cell phones. It is a rule that is consistently displayed on all trains - no using mobile phones in the passenger carriages - but so discreetly that I didn't even notice it until half way through our trip. Japan is a rule-following country; following rules demonstrates respect, avoids shame, makes the community look good.  If you're asked not to talk on your phone in the passenger compartments, then you don't talk on your phone in the passenger compartments.  Indeed, I think it might even rise to the level of a taboo, so uniformly was the rule followed.  This fundamentally alters the experience of riding on trains: it is a restful, nay even peaceful, experience.  This quiet is the major reason that I suspect Jeff ranks riding the trains as his very favorite Japanese experience. 

Information overload.

Adding to Jeff's enjoyment (being an engineer and a systems guy) was the train network's precision and maximum efficiency. Trains are never late. And I don't mean more or less on time, I mean to the second. In the busiest stations, trains are spaced as close as a few minutes apart - just long enough for passengers to step on board. To ensure all runs smoothly, stations are full of information (if you know where to look - and how to decipher it) about which train carriage will stop where for a given line, and even what car you want to be on (for local trains) if you are switching at another station. Particularly busy stations have painted lanes on the platform, colored-coded by line, so passengers can queue efficiently for the rapid series of arrivals.

An illustrative example: We found ourselves passing through Osaka's main station at the beginning of a three-day weekend (unbeknown to us at the time). Three-day weekends, you should understand, are a serious matter in Japan; as one Japanese explained to me, Japan has an excessive number of national holidays (15) because the workaholic Japanese would never take vacation otherwise.  Being the weekend of the second Monday in October, the entire country was celebrating Sports Day, which commemorates the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.  (No, really.)  

Koyasan: The Legendary Stuff of Legend

Before we left for our two-week trip to Japan, a friend gifted us David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a novel about Dutch people in Japan in the late 1700s (so basically, it was perfect for us). Half way through the book, the story takes a gothic turn when a main character is spirited away to a remote Shinto shrine hidden in the mountains, run by an evil abbot who hides his salacious and murderous plots behind a veneer of religious ritual. I was just reaching the dramatic climax the night we slept at a remote Buddhist temple high in the mountains, surrounded by towering cedars, a sprawling graveyard, and the nocturnal sounds of the forest.

Spending the night on Mt. Koya (Koyasan) was my favorite of favorite experiences in Japan precisely because it was the legendary stuff of legend - the stuff you read about in books but don't expect to experience for yourself. And in turn, every part of our 24 hours in Koyasan was my favorite part, which, when you think about it, is an exceedingly impressive return on travel investment.

Favorite Part #1: Getting to Koyasan.  Osaka, the closest major city to Koyasan, is huge, sprawling, and disorientating to newcomers - the Houston of Japan. Somewhere within the metropolis of Osaka, you switch to Koyasan's private rail line: just two diminutive cars on narrow gage track that winds through increasingly remote farmland (trees weighed down by bright orange persimmons) and then up into the mountains (verdant forests of bamboo and cedar green, filtering the sunlight to a gentle dimness).  In between isolated one-room stations losing their battle with the forest moss, there are sudden vistas of the rolling folds of the mountains, green fading to gray with distance.

Playing chicken on the funicular.

When the train can climb no higher, you switch to a funicular.  The mountainside is so steep here that the rows of seats inside the cable car are nearly vertical.  The short ride tests your faith in the reliability of Japanese engineering.

But that's not all.  After you safely disembark, there is still a bus ride into the heart of Koyasan, down a narrow curving road kept in perpetual darkness by the surrounding forest.  The road opens up into the central intersection of Koyasan, and suddenly everything is white walls and sunshine.

Train SpotPadding

After my Berlin escapades with Megan, I endured a solitary eight-hour train trip back to the Hague. Too tired to read, I whiled away the hours playing with Jeff's SpotPad smartphone application. (You'll remember SpotPad from my pintxos-mapping adventures in San Sebastian.) The end result: a stream-of-consciousness map of my train ride!

OK, I do not delude myself that anyone else will find my random thoughts diverting - but I think the final map looks cool. If you are curious about the stream-of-consciousness part, the map is easier to manipulate if you click through to Google Maps. If that seems too strenuous, I have pasted my comments below, after the jump.

View From East to West: My eight-hour train ride from Berlin in a larger map

Morocco: Getting over Myself

(I am catching up on old blog posts I never got around to posting. This one dates from early April, after our week-long vacation in Morocco.)

I like to think I know my own shortcomings.  I will never win any awards for tact, I don't volunteer to do the dishes often enough, and I can be unintentionally short with people in a work environment. 

My biggest flaw when it comes to traveling: an endless capacity for timidity. I am afraid to go into places where I might not be welcome, to look lost or uncertain or to otherwise stand out, even to buy things (as that necessitates interacting with strangers).  Thus one of my goals for 2011 is to learn to talk to people when traveling. Easier said than done.

So when we set off to Morocco, I set myself five challenges, all related to getting over myself enough so I could enjoy my vacation.  It did not go as smoothly as planned, but as they say - two steps forward, one step back...  it's not quick, but at least you're moving in the right direction.

The Casablanca train station, our first morning in Morocco

I Heart Yellow Trains

As with the lovably rag-tag feel of Boston's T, or the cleanliness and efficiency of the DC Metro, I have come to feel warmly towards the yellow Dutch trains, with their 80s-style interior and (typically) friendly conductors. I commute every day through Den Haag's central station, where the yellow trains line up patiently for commuters and travelers alike. I like how the trains are both mundane components of the national public transit system (who doesn't love commuting by train?) and the promise of new adventures, the link to the greater European rail network. Bucharest, here I come! Few things thrill me more these days than hearing the shrill whistle of a conductor as the train doors close and we pull out of a station.

Reasons why I heart yellow trains:

• The voordeelurenabonnement, aka Jeff's NS card: 40% off (40% off!) all travel on trains throughout the Netherlands - and not just for cardholder Jeff, but for three other people, too. This is an even better deal than the museumkaart, though only available to people with a Dutch bank account. In fact, the NS card was one of our primary motivations for getting a Dutch bank account. And boy was it worth it.

• Instant gratification, aka the joy of jumping on a train as the whistle blows and the doors close: We have shown up to the train station without tickets literally two minutes before a train is supposed to leave. No problem! And while a thirty-minute layover in an airport is a recipe for craziness, a five minute layover by train is perfect - it still leaves time to grab a coffee and a snack. Anything longer than half an hour, and you have time to see half the town. Trains involve no security lines, no long terminal halls, no check in or ticket collecting at a gate. No lines, period. This makes for efficient, fun, and spontaneous travel.
• The information people at the stations appear to have memorized the train schedules and platforms for the entire country. Going from Maastricht to Den Haag? Take the 13:23 from platform 3, transfer at Eindhoven to platform 15. Next!
• Many of the Dutch train stations are beautiful relics of the golden era of train travel (notable exception: Rotterdam), and all of them are centrally located. Thus we continue our 100% avoidance of taxis in the Netherlands.
• Trains are cool.

Reasons why I sometimes threaten to break up with yellow trains:

• Lack of information: There are some stations in the Netherlands (erhem, Leiden) that do not have any central sign announcing the next trains. Instead you must decipher the complex yellow train time tables (in Dutch) which of course cannot provide updated information about delayed trains. Which brings us to...
• Track works: two more dreaded words were never known to Dutch train travelers. The Dutch train system is fairly orderly and efficient - it's no Germany, but trains usually run on time, and delays typically do not exceed 10 minutes. But boy howdy, throw in some "track works" and all bets are off. Going north? Today you will have to go east then south, then loop around via Germany. Trying to get to the airport for an early morning flight? Oops, we forgot to tell you this train isn't going to the airport today - you will have to get off at the next station, detour to Amsterdam, then backtrack to Schiphol. And if you can understand this Dutch announcement, I should also warn you the next train to Amsterdam is delayed.* Have a great flight!

* True story.