Postcard from...Tsuruga, Fukui

Northern Japanese Alps, from Toyoshina station

I took a detour recently to knock off a couple of bucket list train trips.

Firstly, I wanted to ride the recently extended Hokuriku Shinkansen all the way around the north coast to its new terminus at Tsuruga...and ideally explore that corner of Fukui and the northern coast of Kyoto. Unfortunately, that part of the coastline will have to wait for another visit, I think by car, given the relative inaccessibility of the area & the less the less than easy to get to places I'd really like to explore, around Wakasa Bay, without having to rush to make connections.

The earliest Shinano from Matsumoto was a beautiful autumnal sunrise ride, the Northern Alps beyond Azumino to the left (west) before the Chikuma valley appeared after the tunnels either side of  sleepy  Omi/Hijiri-kogen. And what an appearance - spreading out to the north with Nagano city sprawled in the middle. A fairly unique train journey given the climb the line makes to cross from Shinshu to Chikuma (the two geographical & historical halves of modern Nagano prefecture).

If you want some anorak information about Shinano click here and for the route, here

JR East E7

From Nagano you won't get much of a view, as the line carves through a number of tunnels at light speed - this train really does get a shift on. Super smooth, and before you know it you're cutting the corner of Niigata prefecture and decelerating into Toyama with the Sea of Japan on your right already. Eyes left (south) for a stunning mountainscape. This part of the line, openned in 2015 is extremely swift!

Our shinkansen slows down after Kanazawa, dropping south through Ichikawa & Fukui prefectures with fewer and fewer passengers. This stretch of line only openned in March this year (2024); Tsuraga obviously not the final intended stop. I am sure, once the final leg is finished to Osaka (in another 20 years' time?) the route will open up the region - and not soon enough - the Noto peninsula desperately needs better transport access & investment to recover from the hammer blows of earthquake & typhoon damage this year.

Kagayaki: Tokyo–Tsuruga, limited-stop service, since 14 March 2015
Hakutaka: Tokyo–Tsuruga, mostly all-stations service, since 14 March 2015
Tsurugi: Toyama–Tsuruga, mostly all-stations shuttle service, since 14 March 2015
Asama: Tokyo–Nagano, mostly all-stations service, corresponding to existing Nagano Shinkansen service introduced in 1997

Follow the yellow (or blue!) brick road

And what of Tsuruga? No time to explore the town but just enough to find a nest of Thunderbirds, the aged limited express that used to service the line up to Kanazawa from Osaka/Kyoto, hugging the shore of Lake Biwa. The views of the lake are limited, unfortunately, especially if you are not sitting by the window & cannot keep the curtain up. My fellow foreign travellers glued to games on their phones/and ignoring the historic sites across the water. Really, really frustrating ignorance (and your enormous suitcases are even more annoying).


Familiar limited express rolling stock (JR-West 683-4000); comfy enough but looks & feels 'tired'...good enough for my needs and the relatively short trundle to Osaka - the non-shinkansen line from Kyoto taking a little more time, but divested of the tourons a chance to enjoy the suburban corridor. No rush!

Kissing Thuderbirds, Tsuruga station

I'm glad I made the effort to sweep around the "Hokuriku Arch" - an area begging to be discovered more slowly. There is a rail pass for this region that would be good value & allow travellers to stop over & linger for a whole week. Inner trainspotter satisfied!

A miraculous day - a lifetime in the day of a superfan

 Avoiding the end of the year ceremony, having made a huge excuse, my husband and I got on the Shinano.  The train was packed like sardines with overseas tourists and Japanese families going to their hometowns for the New Year holiday, and our destination, Nagoya.  It was the 28th December, the last working day of the year.  Although we were rather uncomfortable on our journey, we were overjoyed with the prospect of being able to see the final show of our favorite singer,Yumi Matsutoya, Yuming, on her 54th concert of her tour, “The Journey “.

When we arrived at Nagoya, there was an announcement of cancellation for further service to Shinano because of some falling rocks.  We felt so lucky to have gotten on an earlier train, even though it had been a very painful two hours.

Our seat numbers of the show only came out at midday on the day of the concert on our phone, and we found out that our seats were on the 2nd lane in the arena, the best seats we’ve ever had in the seventeen previous shows we’ve been to!  We were absolutely thrilled to see that but the seat number was so tricky that we never knew if it was a real good seat or not until we were actually in the concert hall.

knick-knacks

With our huge expectations we arrived at Nihon Gaishi, and joined a long queue to purchase some concert souvenirs, such as a tin-badge unique to every venue, T-shirts, bags…. During this concert tour, concert staff had been introduced through Instagram and we felt as if they were our old acquaintances.  So when we saw the person in charge of the stalls, we greeted her, and she kindly responded with her beautiful smile, which gave us more familiarity.

After we had had a happy little chat with the sales lady, it was time for the lottery for the special pair of glasses, released as a commemoration set; we had been able to get the lottery ticket only when we bought her new CD.  Actually we bought four, even though we already had three copies : to tell you the truth, we had a little discussion about the necessity to buy this same CD just for the glasses, even though they were ‘special’.

There were lots of people in front of us and we had had no luck so far.  It was our turn.  We were at the lottery desk without any hope.  First my husband, Isamu tried and failed, of course, then me…  Goodness gracious!  I’ve made it!  Yeeeeeeees!  Hooray!  The lottery guy was so surprised that he dropped the big hand bell and there was a huge noise and he screamed ‘You got it!  Congratulations!’

I was extremely surprised and couldn’t believe it because I had never won any lottery before.  Of course I was very happy but at the same time I started being anxious about what would happen next, as we had been too lucky that day so far.

It was about 4 pm and the concert started at 6:30 pm, so we went back to our accommodation, only a ten minute walk from the hall to calm ourselves down.

At the hotel, we had a little snack, changed into the white tour T-shirt which we have always worn on this tour (our uniform) and got perfectly ready mentally and visually by 5:30 pm…and off we went back to the hall and found an excited audience of!

About 10,000 people were already there, and we lined up to find our seats, East 3 Block 2nd lane 11, 12, which were super good seats, we called ‘god’s seat’!  We were absolutely delighted and thrilled!!

We felt all the audience’s huge excitement and anticipation, the concert started with the familiar introduction, then our goddess, Yuming, was walking towards the stage in front of us!  That stage set up was centre-stage so if our seats were the opposite side of the 2nd lane, we couldn’t have seen her passing through.  So we were super lucky indeed!!

superfans 

The concert was the very best, Yuming and the other performers played so well and I felt as if I had made eye contact with Yuming a couple of times.  The absolute highlight was when she pointed at me in the middle of  ‘Mamotte Agetai’ … I almost fainted with joy.  

We were dancing, jumping, clapping our hands, waving at her frantically, screaming, singing along, enjoying ourselves every minute, I have never been happier!

At the end of the show, all the staff were on the stage and they hugged each other, which was a very emotional scene and made us cry as well: the show, the tour, The Journey really is finishing…

There was a triple encore that was very rare, and moreover Masataka Matsutoya, Yuming’s husband & producer and director of the show and a great musician himself, accompanied her on keyboards for her last song, ‘Sotsugyo Shashin’, one of her iconic tunes and the best song for the final.

Mr and Mrs Matsutoya came down from the stage and they walked past in front of us, under the thunderous applause from the crowd.

Finally the overwhelming show and our miraculous day was over. 

The Shinano River

Japanese Crested Ibis

The River Shinano is in Japan.

It's the longest river in Japan. It's about 367 kilometers long. It has more than 1,100 species of plant and fifty-five fish. Ducks, Cranes and Ibis live on the River Shinano.

People need the river because it produces 2,618 megawatts of hydroelectric power.

By Ayumi

A very long journey to Disneyland and back - another Tale from Longpuddle!

Write about a peaceful long journey you made? 

Where were you going, and who with? 

Why were you travelling, and how did you feel about arriving?

I went to Tokyo Disneyland with my boy friend last month. It was a bus tour and should be for a day trip, but it was the most unforgettable and longest journey in my life.

Tokyo Disneyland was established thirty years ago and has served the anniversary events since last April to the end of this March. I’m same age as the park, so I wanted to go there within my thirty years old. It snowed, but we could go the park smoothly and we had believed that we would be able to go home without any serious issues.

The bus left the park at nine PM and stopped at a service area close to Hachioji junction. It snowed a lot and any cars could not move ahead to Yamanashi and Nagano prefecture. We had to stay two nights in the service area consequently. Fortunately, there were rest rooms and restaurant, but we could not take even the shower for three days.

Finally, we moved to Tokyo station by train and took Shinkansen to move to Nagano station next morning. Then, we transferred to Shinano express to back to Matsumoto station.

It was a long journey and very tired, but I was very happy that my kind boyfriend and people supported on several scenes.

Posted for Chinasa