Here's the first train I took upon touching down on the land of the rising sun. It's the keisei skyliner that brings u from the narita aiport to the Tokyo central. A passenger sitting next to me on the plane was telling me that it's going to take two hours if I took the regular keisei train, so I decided I'm going to take the skyliner. It zipped through to the city in just 45 min!
and here's the king of them all -- the shinkansen (bullet train), the pride of Japan, and rightly so. See how sleek and sexy the train is....like the snout of a dolphin. I have an urge to rub noses with it. And what's a train ride without coffee? Ah...sipping coffee in the shinkansen as the beautiful scenery swept past me....sufficient to give me a high just thinking about it, even if the coffee contains no caffeine.....
Talking about train rides, one of my 'bucket list' for this trip was to experience the morning rush hour. According to my travelling 'bible' Lonely Planet, this is not for the faint-hearted, and reserved only for those who are masochistic. I believe I fit the category, so there I was, on an early weekday morning, about 8am (I woke up at 7am ok, which was jolly early for one on holiday!), merrily on my way to take the train ride to Shinjuku station, the infamous nexus where all the main train arteries converge. I was full of anticipation over what was lying ahead -- the big squash, or crush! But alas, it was not meant to be....the crowd wasn't as dense as I had expected it to be. Maybe I was on the wrong train, wrong spot, but I did not witness any of those 'pushers' wearing clinical white gloves, where they are supposed to push the crowd all the way into the train so that the train doors can close. And while the train I was in was crowded enough, there wasn't that 'sardine-packed' phenomenon which I had experienced back here in Singapore. I eventually left with that item from my bucket list unticked...sigh! (useful GP example: there are female-only carriages for the trains, usually in the middle)
On the bright side, there were so many people in Shinjuku, literally a sea of people. It's quite a challenge to manoeuvre through the crowd and match the pace of their walking. I felt 'drowned' in the midst of them all.....
