Kansai 2009 Travel Notes: Railways

i find myself obsessed by everything about riding a train in japan.

a large variety of railways and trains were there to explore and experience, starting with nankai's (南海電鉄) rapi:t taking us from kansai airport to namba, hankyu (阪急電鉄) showing us around suburban osaka and carrying us to kyoto, and JR's haruka (関空特急)returning us back to kansai.

just finding the right railways to travel alone can send your pulse racing, for there are five private railway companies (私鉄) and the japan rail (JR) operating in the keihanshin (京阪神) region.

we were fortunate to bump into the nanaki 50000 series train at kansai airport station, and what a smart train for our first ride in the trip (see the pictures below).

the staff at the ticket office helping us with our direction

amazed to find out this design known as "outdated future"

our lack of japanese training was not a problem, as four tickets to namba station (難波駅) were settled easily after we showed the staff at the ticket office the name of the hotel.

buying tickets from an automatic vending machine was not so smooth the first time, and in fact we occupied a machine for nearly five minutes and we must have caused a somewhat significant loss of overall productivity in japan for that day.


a series of automatic ticket vending machines

after all we were not so stupid and we worked out that the machines were fare-oriented design - first work out the fare from the railway line map, then insert money, and finally press the required fare button and number of passengers, phew!

as the oldest member in the group i like the classic train carriages used on the hankyu railways - they are painted venerable dark red on the outside and with bench seats against yellowish wall on the inside.


EMU series 6000 leaving ikeda station 池田駅


Juso station 十三駅 is a major interchange

Ibaraki-shi Station 茨木市駅

mrs. lee made sure that we did not let China down and we did our utmost to observe the manners of riding a train, which simply meant not talking, turning off the phone ringing, keeping away from priority seats and acting like a tourist - so to avoid being frown upon for any unwilling infringement. a popular book in japan called 大阪学 describes that osaka is the japanese city that is not so manner-abiding, though we did not notice such things such as phone ringing or taking advantage of priority seats.



well, watching the beautiful scenic along the railroads with only the rhythms of the tracks in the background was most enjoyable.


sunset on the train returning to osaka from Ibaraki-shi