Sunday, January 16, 2011

First ever Shinkansen ride

woohoo...took a train from Osaka station to Shin-Osaka station and rushed for the Tokaido shinkansen with all my luggages. I was soo exctied for my first shinkansen ride that I entered the wrong car and sat comfortable in it for 10 minutes before I realised it.

Lol...I was on the right platform and right train, it's just that I entered the wrong car which is for the reserved tickets. I had to walk from one end of the train to the other end of the train and by the time I read the other end to the non-reserved seats.....the train left and I had to wait for another one.

The RM500 ticket!~
Me with my new boots and the bullet train. This is the second train.....a N700 series shinkansen....the fastest and it can travel at a max speed of 300km/h. 
We were in luck. Despite having just missed a nozomi train. The 9.47am and the one after is also a nozomi train. If you wanna save time, take the nozomi train as it is the fastest train, stopping at only major stations. From Shin-Osaka to Tokyo, it stops only at Kyoto, Nagoya, Tokyo and Shinagawa and the entire journey takes only 2 hour and 25mins.

It would be slower if you take hikari trains which stops at more stations and even worse kodama trains which stops at all stations and takes about 4 hours.

We were on platform 23, waiting for nozomi train no 222 headed to Tokyo at 9.47 am and this train has 16 cars and below are the names of the stations it will stop at.
 Each car is labelled with a car number, a signage which tells you is it's a smoking or non-smoking car, another signage which tells you if it's for reserved seats/ non-reserved seats/ do not enter as the trains are to be moved back for storage. Is that the right word?
 Yes...yes.....I can't wait to be back in Tokyo!
Once at Shinagawa, we went to the hotel, left our luggages at the counter and off we go again back to the train station.
We took the yamanote line from Shinagawa Station to Ōsaki Station in hopes of getting onto the Rinkai line to Odaiba. However it seems that there was some trouble as we waited for a long time and the train never departed before I realised that there's a signage which says trouble.
So I had to take a detour from Ōsaki Station  to Ōimachi Station and then take the Rinaki line to Tokyo Teleport. ahh~all the precious time wasted.
Like for the shinkansen, check the platform number, the lines which the platform cater to, where is the train that is arriving headed to, the time, the number of cars and it will tell you whenever the train is near.

When in Tokyo, I kept having to used the fare-adjustment machine because I'm so used to the malaysian system where we buy one ticket to one place and then have to buy another ticket to another station.

But in Japan it's different, you can just buy one ticket to your desired location and then keep changing trains without having to exit the train station at all........but then the silly kampung girl in me kept buying tickets to the 1st train station where I would have to change lines. So everytime I exit, I have to adjust my ticket to the right fare. But I really like the machine! It's so convenient for foreigners like me~

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