Part I: Morning of
My many 8-hour long road trips in the Midwest had me mentally prepared for a 9-hour long train ride to Tokyo. But as I woke up with a writhing pain in my stomach and a stitch in my chest at 3 am the night before my trip, I realized that I was no longer physically prepared. Had I eaten something weird the day before? Was I having a heart attack? Would I be able to go to school that day, take my midterm test, and then travel to Tokyo? I wondered these things the next two times I woke up in pain that night. When finally it came time to get up, I walked downstairs and, using vocabulary from the illness chapter that I had just studied in my speaking Japanese class, told my host mom that I was feeling funky. When we ruled out food poisoning, a cold, and needing to poop, my host mom diagnosed me with a case of excitement for my-big-day-to-come and sent me off to school after giving me some indigestion pills just to make me feel better psychologically.
Part II: Getting There
Using the seishun 18 kippu to ride the JR lines up to Tokyo, you have change trains about 6 times. The rides ranged from 30 minutes long to 2 ½ hours long. If you can get a seat on the longer rides, it’s really not that bad of a trip even though it takes so long. You go through some pretty cool country areas, so about 75% of the time, I was just looking out the window (the other 25% of the time I spent listening to my ipod or snoozing). Probably the only really annoying thing is that you can’t eat a meal on the train and that you have to either try to inconspicuously eat little snacks or eat when you change trains. Although I felt like crap and kept getting overheated on the train ride to Tokyo, I was lucky in the fact that I had no appetite: While the others complained about hunger during some of the longer rides, I was totally cool. We had left Kyoto around 1 and arrived in Shinjuku (Tokyo) around 10.
Part III: Tokyo
Meeting with my family was incredible. My aunt was like my second mother, my uncle was kind of intimidating but was nonetheless incredibly nice, and my cousins were so goofy yet so grown-up. Most of the time, I sat around my cousins’ apartment as everyone took care of me. I felt like a total mooch, but there wasn’t really anything I could help them with, and even when I offered, they just made me sit and watch tv. I forgot all sorts of things—nice shoes, tights, pajamas, clothes for my last day with them—but they either lent or bought me whatever I needed.
My cousin Yoshiko’s graduation ceremony at SUJ apparently bored everyone except her. But it was fun to see all the girls dressed up in traditional hakama and to meet my uncle’s old professors from his time at SUJ. My feet hurt from the heels that my aunt bought me, but I looked cute.
After visiting my family, I kind of regretted not choosing to study abroad at SUJ. But I suppose I had very practical reasons for choosing Kansai, so I hope my decision is worth it.
The rest of the week, I visited various places in Tokyo—Shibuya, Harakuju, Shinjuku—but it rained for a couple days, so I got my hair cut and learned how to make rice during those days. The rain didn’t spoil anything because I hit up much of Tokyo two years ago, but I think the next time I get a chance to go to Tokyo, I’d like to visit Yokohama, maybe go to Disneyland, and climb Mt. Fuji!
I came back to the Kansai region for the last weekend of spring break, and the ride down was much more beautiful than the ride up. The train runs along the ocean for part of the time and also goes through very quaint country areas that look like they’re out of a Miyazaki film. In Kansai, I went to Shinsaibashi (near Osaka) for the first time, which was a good place for shopping.
Conclusion
The 18 kippu is totally worth it. Seriously, roundtrip between Kyoto and Tokyo for 4600 yen/~$46? All the Japanese people who knew I was doing this thought I was crazy, but the train ride is actually pretty comfortable, and if you can entertain yourself without internet, then a 9-hour ride is nothing.
