On a Floating Bridge

Its holiday season in Japan.

To mark the occasion a large section of the population takes one of the few opportunities in the Japanese calendar to take a guilt free break from work.

65.7% of Japanese were living in urban centres in 2005, (which, surprisingly, according to the UN Common Database, is less than the UK’s 88.9% and the US’s 80.8% or Australia’s disturbing 92.7%)

(By the way, finding myself extremely sidetracked by this awesome UN stats interpreter – Why does Zimbabwe have a greater percentage of women in “government” than Japan?!)

Anyway anyway, this urban population, even at 65.7% is still a whacking great 83.87 million people (which is more than the whole UK population..).

New Year is the traditional day to spend time with one’s family, and the distortion of geographic spread brought about by the dash to wealth in the country’s megapolises, -[ summarised in one succinct Japanese word Jyokyo ?? which literally means rise to the capital, or proceed to the capital ]- means that the event is coupled with a mass exodus from the cities to peoples’ home towns.

In the closing days of 2003, The JR group recorded the second highest number of travelers leaving Tokyo on December 31st since the group’s privatisation in 1987, these figures were then mirrored a few days later on January 4th with passengers bound back in to the capital.

Over this holiday period in 2003/4, nationwide, 10.36 million people used the JR group’s long distance trains (excluding the local trains and inner city subways that JR also manage a portion of). In other transport sectors, 3.58 million vehicles used expressways nationwide during the same period, and traffic jams with tailbacks of more than 10 kilometers numbered 128, and there were as many as 12 tailbacks of more than 30 km!

So what’s clear is that there is a big incentive to travel at this time of year. That is true the world over but if you have ever walked through the eerily quiet streets of Shibuya on New Year’s Day or taken the subway over the holidays its easy to think that the whole of Japan has shut the door on Tokyo, set the alarm and asked the neighbours to take the milk delivery.

Though I can imagine that traveling in Japan in this period could be more than a little stressful – trying to compete with the 10 million strong hordes – but for those that must, the good news is that as of Wednesday last week, the tri-annual seishun 18 kippu season opened. For those who haven’t heard of it, the seishun 18 kippu is a pass costing just �11,500 and is valid for any non-consecutive five days during a specific period (in this case December 10th to January 20th) on all JR rapid trains and local trains (but not limited express or shinkansen).

With this ticket you can make your way across Japan very cheaply if a little slowly. I think its a great backpacker alternative – if you can time your trip to coincide with the season – to the JR rail pass, which has lots of restrictions and is much more costly.

Even better than this though, is that there are 6 sleeper trains on which you can ride with the ticket.

What you can expect for the extremely cheap distance-to-yen ratio is a carriage with forward facing sit-up seats – 2 each, either side of the aisle. Often a women’s only carriage is available. The payment process is a little complicated because you cross over 2 days, but there are two ways to combat that, better explained at the bottom of this page. To get as far as from Kyoto to Fukuoka for as little as �4000 is a traveling option not easy to come upon in Japan. Its likely to be better and cheaper than the equivalent bus journey with much better facilities. Because of this, it is very advisable to book up as soon as you can because these popular cheap tickets get snapped up quickly.

On a wider note about sleeper trains in Japan, they span a fairly wide category of travel options so even if you can’t get the one you want on the seishun 18 kippu they’re often cheaper than normal priced shinkansen and more so if it saves you accommodation costs. My recent flightless trip to Korea involved traveling on a night train from Tokyo to Okayama (not included on seishun 18 kippu). Up until now I was unwavering about my favourite train, the shinkansen, despite stiff competition from the overnight red arrow number 01 from St. Petersburg to Moscow – with newspaper and breakfast, or the highspeed Beijing to Shanghai link that was super clean and comfy.

However, I’ve given up all of the above, for the Sunrise Seto sleeper train I took that evening. Not all sleeper trains in Japan are the same rolling stock, but, a basic private berth in the Sunrise meant a cabin that was designed by an architectural firm, a skylight window above the bunk to watch neon lit Tokyo fade into starry skies over the old Tokaido way and the North Pacific Ocean.

There were JR issue pajamas, and if asked for from the conductor, a shower token for showers cleaner and more high-tec than some in hotels I’ve stayed in in the rest of Japan.

Next to the boarding platform was a small shop where passengers were stocking up on beer, rice crackers and magazines for the journey.

To stay in these private berths does costs more (�21,000) than a bed in the communal bunk room (�14,500). The rooms were really something special, but the bunks looked perfectly comfortable and I would definitely take that option in the future to save money. The bunks are advertised as ‘nobi-nobi’ seats. One way of writing that in characters would translate to ‘feeling at ease’ ‘carefree’ while written in another character would mean ’stretching’ (out). If you want to get these cheaper beds, or ride for free on your JR Rail Pass, that is what you should ask for.

As I mentioned before, the JR rail group is finding less profitability in these night trains, with the closure of the Hayabusa (Tokyo – kumamoto) scheduled for next March. Hope you can enjoy these trains before then and support them so they are less inclined to close more!

Sources
2004 Kyodo News International, Tokyo