December 19th, 2007
My Day Off
1. Went to McBreakfast
2. Went to library – Internet
3. CoCo Ichiban
4. Happy Town
5. Apartment
6. Video Game
7. Sleep – Zzzzz
Let’s make it quick: The Internet at the library worked fine this time. I bought a new cable last week, and that seemed to do the trick. Or maybe it was just a temporary glitch at the library itself last week, I don’t know.
I didn’t have any classes to prepare for, so I just researched some stuff for my upcoming vacation time. One of Marc’s friends suggested something called a “Seisyun 18 Kippu” that might be a good idea. When I heard the name, I assumed it was only for people under 18, so I didn’t pay much attention. But I did look it up at the library. Wikipedia knew all about it.
What a Deal!
The Seisyun 18 Kippu is a ticket that is only offered a few times a year. One of those times is for the holiday break, so I’m in luck. Although designed for college students, the ticket is available to anyone, even adult foreigners (some tickets are for Japanese only, but not these). You get five tickets for 115,000Y ($100 or so). Each of the tickets lets you ride anywhere you want to go until midnight of the day you use it. There are no distance restrictions other than they are good only during one midnight to midnight 24-hour cycle. They’re also only good for the “slow” trains, not the Shinkansen.
I am only interested in going to Kyoto right now, and that’s only a four-hour ride, so I have it easy. Marc, on the other hand, wants to go to Tokyo, and I think that’s a fourteen-hour ride from here. If we use one ticket each way, that still leaves us three more tickets to use for another long-distance adventure later on. The tickets are only good until mid-January, so I suspect I will have at least two big adventures during this break. $100 total transportation costs for two long-distance vacations is pretty darn good, even if they are on the slow trains.
How Do I Get There?
While reading up on this ticket, there was a link to a website that claimed to make trip itineraries easier. http://www.hyperdia.com/cgi-English/ works beautifully for me. I can type ‘Hokaiin’ into the first box, and any destination in Japan in the second box. Then I can uncheck ‘airfare’ and ‘Shinkansen’ to get the itinerary for the slow trains. If I need to be somewhere by a certain time, I can put that in and it’ll tell me when I have to leave. It’s pretty neat, and will be very useful. It looks like I need to change trains twice on the way to Kyoto. At the city of Aioi, it only gives me one minute to transfer to a train in a station I’ve never been to before. I suspect that’ll be a problem, but it’s one I can deal with. Overall, the information from the website was helpful.
Where Do I Stay?
So basically, if I decide to go to Kyoto (or anywhere else) I have the tools I need to plan and go. The only thing remaining is where to stay overnight in some of these far-off places. Theoretically, I could go to the Okayama station at 2am, ride to Kyoto for four hours, arriving at 6am. Then I could spend the day and leave there around 8pm. That would get me home within the same 24 hour period, and I could not only use just one of my five tickets, but I wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel. It’s do-able, but even I’m not that cheap. Besides, Kyoto is too big and there are too many things to see for just one day; everyone says that, and my travel map agrees with them. I’ll need to stay over one night for sure. My travel map has a bunch of hotels listed on it, but I didn’t have it with me at the library, so I will have to research that tomorrow.
And that’s pretty much it. I learned some important new things relating to travel within Japan, but other than that, not much new. Tomorrow is my last class with K-Sensei before the big break, and the same with Japanese Class. Hopefully, I can find a cheap hotel online. I have a credit card with me, but I’ve never tried using it here yet. I was told many cards wouldn’t work in Japan. I doubt it will be a problem with a hotel, since they would probably deal with foreigners all the time. We’ll see.
No related posts.
Entries (RSS)