a post, in more detail

I think I didn't mention this, but it made quite an impression - the Indian place we ate at on Monday night had no idea what either chutney or raita was. Now you may not either, but you're not Indian. I was disturbed.

We woke up early on Tuesday morning, made the five minute walk to Asakusa Station, stopping along the way at various vending machines to find the perfect iced coffee and picking up some freshly made inari from a small stand. Mmmm.

Went through the usual somewhat-frustrating-but-not-too-bad experience of buying tickets and getting to the right place.

The train pulled up, looking like a train out of the future, which for us Americans, it unfortunately is. Before we could get on, a crew of yellow and blue clad worker drones swarmed the train, turning seats around, sweeping up trash, and literally making the train spotless, so it could make the trip back the other way. Pretty neat.



We get on the train, find our assigned seats and play with all the neat little features at the seats - fold out footrests that warn you to take your shoes off before using (those Japanese always got to get that in somewhere), a little table that comes out from the wall, windows that talk to you ("I am a window") - not really.

Tokyo is, as I've said before, freakin' massive, so a good half of the 2 hour train ride was spent just getting out of the city. Once in the countryside, it was very pretty. Lots of fields, farmers, and fields. Lots of fields in very vivid green colours. One thing I noticed was that there was much more electric wires running everywhere, power towers were a lot more visible, etc. Why did I notice this?

After most of the ride, we change trains somewhere, onto a much smaller local train for the 10 minute ride to Nikko.
Here's Nikko station.