Japan Transportation & My Last Day in Japan

Attractions? Checked. Accommodation? Checked. Foods? Checked. And now end my final post on my adventurous autumn Japan trip by sharing a bit regarding Japan railway and public transportation network.

Frankly to say that the actual period I had in Japan was actually 7 days, not 8 days because Nicole and I spend our last day mostly on the Shinkansen and Kansai International Airport.

What is Shinkansen by the way? Shinkansen, the first bullet train, is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. Running at the speeds of up to 300 km/h, Shinkansen is known for punctuality and it will depart exactly on the scheduled time. So ,don't expect for Shinkansen to wait for you.

Aerodynamic nose of the fabled Shinkansen



The journey from Tokyo to Kansai International Airport took us 3 hours by Shinkansen

The number on Shinkansen indicates whether the truck is reserved or non-reserved.

Similar to airplanes, most of the Shinkansen offer seats in two different type of classes; ordinary or enocomic class and business class or known as green car class. Due to Nicole and I are Japan Rail Pass holders (will talk about this later), we can only reserved the ordinary class. However, no matter what class it was, for me the seat is so comfortable and so spacious compare to the airplanes. Hey what! I'm almost forgot that everytime I on board, I had no problem with the tight legroom space because I am shortie by the way. Anyway, it is not a bad sign to have the Japan Rail Pass because we can reserve the seat for free.

Look at the picture at the upper right, Shinkansen offer a generous amount of foot space. Even their number are being numbered and lettered in the same style as on airplanes.

The safety guideline.

We knew that we were almost reach airport when we saw Hep Town.



Finally reached Kansai International Airport, which closer to the city of Osaka.

Japan's public transportation network leades the world in terms of efficiency, safety and comfort. Most of the places especially the attractions can be reached by taking the public transportation including Mount Fuji. However, when seriously look into their railway line, it is awesomely so complicated and complexity. On the first day we arrived, we were almost lost and confused for 10-20 minutes when we plan to buy ticket to the guest house from Kansai International Airport by using their ticket machine. At the end, we gave up and we went to the ticket office to buy the ticket instead of using the ticket machine.

Don't believe? Look at the map of the railway line on the top of the ticket machines below.

Not only one

But there are two. Really makes both of us scratched our head.

Talking about that Japan Rail Pass, Nicole recommended to buy it as we plan to visit more than one region of Japan. If you plan to visit Kyoto, Kobe, Nara and even Osaka besides Tokyo, then you need this as it offers an incredibly economical way to travel throughout Japan. This pass gives an unlimited travel on almost all trains of the nationwide network of JR lines, including the Shinkansen as well as on many JR bus lines. We can simply travel at anytime we want without reserve any ticket and like what I said before, we can even reserve the seat for free.

However, this Pass can only be purchased outside of Japan before the visit. It is not for sale inside Japan itself. Nicole bought this pass from Singapore by the way. There are two types of Japan Rail Pass and each of these types is available for either 7 days, 14 days or 21 days.

My name and details on Japan Rail Pass

We spend our last at Kansai International Airport, Japan's second largest airport.

For this trip, we took Jetstar where departed from Singapore and transit to Taiwan before reach Japan.

Not WELCOME but it's GOODBYE TO JAPAN!

Finally, that's the end of my Autumn Adventurous Japan trip with my university housemate, Nicole. It was really one of the amazing and wonderful trip I had. Before this, both of us had been travelled many places during our further study in Sheffield, United Kingdom including the trip of 20 days around Europe. It was a sudden invitation from her to ask me to go Japan. Honestly to say, that moment Japan was not in my current travel list but I am truly not regret on the decision I'd made to travel with her. Lots of exciting experience I had including lost in the middle while try to find the locations and not forgeting too the language barrier we encountered.

Hereby I would like to thanks to Nicole for the invitation and thanks to for doing all the planning and booking the accommodation. Well, she is the host for this trip. THANKS NICOLE!! Can't wait for our next trip.

[Credit to: Japan-Guide.com, Japan Rail Pass homepage and Wikipedia]