The long journey from Tōkyō to Hakodate isn’t as time-consuming as it used to be, thanks to the newly opened first segment of the Hokkaidō Shinkansen. That said, the shinkansen terminus serving one of the biggest urban centres in Japan’s northernmost prefecture is located about 16 kilometres from the heart of the city: hardly aContinue reading “Rail Report: From the Shinkansen to the City on the Hakodate Liner, Japan (02 October 2017)”
Category Archives: Japan 2017 (2nd)
Rail Report: Tōkyō to Hakodate on the Tōhoku and Hokkaidō Shinkansen, Japan (02 October 2017)
Travelling between Tōkyō and Hokkaidō has never been easier, with new high-speed rail services whisking passengers from the Japanese capital to Hakodate in under four and a half hours. Today, let’s see what it’s like to zoom all the way up to the great big north on an unbroken run along two shinkansen lines: oneContinue reading “Rail Report: Tōkyō to Hakodate on the Tōhoku and Hokkaidō Shinkansen, Japan (02 October 2017)”
Field Report: Sunpu Castle, Shizuoka, Japan (01 October 2017)
Think about the sort of house you’d like to live in after retirement. Will it be a beach-side bungalow, or perhaps a small cottage out in the country? Whatever form your post-employment residential dream might take, it’s not likely to be on quite the same scale as the sprawling fortress that Tokugawa Ieyasu moved intoContinue reading “Field Report: Sunpu Castle, Shizuoka, Japan (01 October 2017)”
Rail Report: Niigata to Echigo-Yuzawa on the Genbi Shinkansen, Japan (30 September 2017)
I’m not a fan of contemporary art. In fact, if I were to speak plainly on the matter, I’d risk saying something unprintable. That said, I’m an incurable railway enthusiast through and through … and when I learned that one of Japan’s famous shinkansen trains had been transformed into a high-speed art gallery, riding thatContinue reading “Rail Report: Niigata to Echigo-Yuzawa on the Genbi Shinkansen, Japan (30 September 2017)”
Flight Report: MNL-NRT-MNL on Jetstar Japan Flight GK40 and GK41
In the past couple of years, the Jetstar group has collectively become my airline of choice when travelling to and from Japan. Attractive fares have played a key part in that rise, but a more important factor is the increase in the number of Japanese cities they now serve directly out of Manila, along withContinue reading “Flight Report: MNL-NRT-MNL on Jetstar Japan Flight GK40 and GK41”
Within striking distance 