Hello, I’m back from my blog break. I missed blogging and want to share my recent trip to Japan with you. I can’t believe that it’s been 9 years since my last visit – and I believe I have enough material to last through the summer!

As an opener, I’m starting on trains. We got a Japan Rail pass for the entire holiday period, and once again it proved to be invaluable for long distance travel. The standard for Japanese rail services have not dropped since my last visit. The stations are clean and safe, with plenty of food and drink purchasing opportunities.

The services were on time to the second.

And the carriages were impeccible. This is the ‘green car’ (ie. first class carriage) of the shinkansen (bullet train), and it’s much more immaculate than a business class cabin on a flight.

I must admit that I’ve been pining for some high-speed rail since our trip to Europe over 2 years ago, and we got our fair share of shinkansen joy. I loved zooming about at 300km/h, and we even get to see Mount Fuji if she’s not too shy.

We used the services between Tokyo and Kyoto a heck of a lot this trip (I counted about 5 separate trips), and I can’t believe how easy it is to get from one place to another. For example, Tokyo to Kyoto (514km) takes about 2h 40mins on the second fastest service (the fastest takes 2h 10mins), with up to 12 services per hour! I guess the domestic services don’t make any money along this corridor.