Travel Journal – Tuesday 13/4 – 2010
A plan, trains and onsen.
As I wrote yesterday… we had a plan. And you got to give it to us, it started to make sense in a Herid-Drak kind of way;
The Plan
08:00 – Wake up and prepare for departure to Ueno
09:00 – Arriving in Ueno taking the Shinkansen to Kusatsu Onsen
12:00 – Arriving at Kusatsu Onsen
16:00 – Depart from Kusatsu Onsen for Ueno
19:00 – Arrive at Tokyo/Shinjuku and lock in our things in a locker
19:30 – Go to Roppongi
20:00 – Party in Roppongi
How it happened
Well, let’s see how I shall describe it…
It failed somewhat you could say. Well, actually it failed quite much or I wouldn’t even have written this entry today most likely. Well, there was some flaws in our plans to begin with and then… well, we’ll get to that.
I got up around seven. I was quite well rested and for some reason quite energetic. We had yesterday built our plans with the assumption that it would be raining. Or rather I had said that we should try to have that as base so we could plan something that would work either way and only be better without rain. Our plan in the beginning was only to go to Roppongi, but that would only take up our evening so we decided to go to one of the destinations on our list; Kusatsu Onsen.
Well, to get to Kusatsu we could either take the slow train the whole way, which would take about 2½-3 hours only the train from Ueno and then added the train to Ueno (40min) plus the bus to Kusatsu from the town the train would stop in (20-30min). Or we could take the bus the whole way there, about 4 hours from Ueno or Shinjuku. OR we could take Shinkansen from Ueno to Takisaki and from Takisaki a slow train which is faster than the other slow train and then take the bus to Kusatsu. We chose the last one since that all in all should have taken us 3 hours. No more, no less. And it probably would have taken us even less…
After we had finally arrived in Ueno we got our first surprise which told us that if we had known this, our trip would have been about… 1h shorter than it was. Plus we probably would have gone to Kusatsu earlier and not needed to wait as much as we did. Well, no harm done, let’s go with our first Shinkansen to Takasaki. This took about 30 min, and during these 30 min the Shinkansen passed by Omoyia1 which is only two stops away from Kita Urawa… unlike Ueno that is about 15 stops from Kita Urawa or something.2
When we arrived in Takasaki the train to Kusatsu-village wouldn’t leave until another hour. So we walked around took some pictures and just enjoyed the unexpected sun and warmth3. This was an unexpected stop we hadn’t anticipated too which prolonged our journey too. If we thought would have gone to Omoyia we would have been able to go there without delay.
Well, the journey on the train though took about 2h and 20m and it was quite interesting actually. We soon were completely outside of the city and the train was going through small Japanese villages and fields. This was by far the best thing with today’s trip I think. Looking around the small and different villages and also looking at the Japanese Mountains and alps. They are really big and steep mountains that emerge out of nowhere which some of you might now is dividing the main island in two making the climate drastically different on the east respectively the west side. I also saw snow clad mountaintops and wonderful mountains to climb. I suggested it to Drak at one point that we just were to get off and climb some on the cliffs but he wasn’t much for climbing. I myself though like climbing, especially in wild nature without any gear, more exciting and feels more savage. Thrills I really enjoy as some of you know.
Well, we then got to Kusatsu after taking a bus at our stop and then we ate some in the bus station. It felt like the rivalry in the station was quite high. There were two restaurants about five meters from each other and directly you even approached one of them a small lady appeared out of the shop with the usual; “Welcome” in Japanese. Which you will hear about a thousand times going into a shop or even just passing by a shop clerk or assistant in any shop or even train station. Any way we ate there, I continued to try at least one new thing every day and ate some fried pork beef with strange soup and greenstuffs. The greenstuffs tasted almost like pizza salad only worse and the soup were… just strange. I ate almost everything of everything else but not all the greenstuffs or the soup.
After some wandering around we found the Onsen we were looking for and went in. The visit though wasn’t too long. I think we bathed for about an hour, relaxed for another and then realized that if we were to come home before 19:00 we had to leave. One other reason to why we didn’t bathe as long was that we both became lightheaded from the hot steam baths. I myself think that I hadn’t gotten enough food and drink and well, onsens do drain the body if it’s fluids as most heat does under any longer period. It was nice though and even though it wasn’t as nice as the last onsen I went to it was a lot better than the Sento and still pretty nice.
The way home though was much easier and smooth now that we knew how to optimize our journey better. But before we were home the clock was 20:00 and we decided not to go to Roppongi. Drak seemed to suffer from a headache so he wanted home to rest. We decided on the Shinkansen that I were to go to Akihabara to try to get another converter while Drak made his way home to Kita Urawa without me. This worked quite well and it was the first time for quite some time that we have separated for longer than just half an hour or so. I got more money from the CitiBank and also found a working converter. I ate some delicious Pasta and almost went to just have a look around in Shibuya and try to talk to people but decided to go back to Drak who were stuck at the apartment.
So now we have charged my other computer (I have two with me) and coordinated our pictures a little. The windows file system though isn’t making it easy to get them into order but we’re trying. Some pictures will be posted, even though I can’t guaranteed I will post them here but you know where to look.
Now though I think we’re going to bed to rest and tomorrow we’ll go to Roppongi and probably spend the day relaxing and trying to socialize with people. Maybe we can practice some speaking or something so we are more prepared for chance encounters. Speaking of which I have spoken more Japanese today than before and even though I sometimes forget the words I want to use and seem to be unable to form sentences before the moment is gone it’s going forward. I’m almost able to form my sentences the moment they go away and not a few minutes afterwards. And my ability to ask questions in getting better, and I’m improving in my understanding too. Though I still need to know more verbs to form better sentences.
Well, well…
Best Regards,
Herid Fel
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