The Big Blank

Pre Golden Weekend

Tokyo to Nagoya in Shinkansen - The Bullet Train. I felt nothing different from a normal train except that I got a wonderfully refreshing sleep given that I cant usually sleep in trains. The interiors were like an airplane. The legspace was unlike the economy seats. The engine looked like it was made for flying and yeah there was ear trouble for few of us. I also felt it whenever the train entered a tunnel. So not much different from our Rajdhanis. Except that the train is amazingly fast and reaches at least 80-90kmph even before it has left the platform. Top speed limit is supposed to be 270kmph but it is not adhered to and train touches 300 sometimes. They leave every 5 minutes from Tokyo to various destinations. So they are at only 10 minutes distance from each other on the same track !!!. Also they are stopped in case of an emergencies like earthquake. I seriously pray that India never try to start something similar.

World Expo - Only few things worth mentioning. Impatient people should not go to expos. I was amazed by the patience of Japanese people to queue up under blazing sun to view some special show by Hitachi. Never found out what it was. Japanese are a patient lot. They will form long queues outside restaurants waiting. I just don't understand it. One interesting psychological game goes on in the queues here. As the queue gets longer and longer, longer the maze like barricades get, thourgh which one needs to walks to reach the end of the queue. I guess it makes you feel that you are not waiting and the whole thing looks to be moving fast. We had crappy Indian food at bollywood masala stall. Crappy as they were here to make a quick buck giving no thought to projecting a good image for India. Rice was under cooked and dishes were dirty. A Jap. girl was going to do kathak at the Indian center, skipped it. Had a ride in gindoloa(??)/cable car. And finally had chilled beer with wonderfully prepared combo of fries and chicken. Man it was heaven in the heat!!

We went to Kyoto next day which is supposed to be a must visit for tourists in Japan. It has shit loads of temples/shrines. On a map, what I thought was bus stands of the city were actually the temples in the city. Now you get the picture I guess. We visited a temple, the Hein shrine and the famous golden pavalion. The places were amazingly well maintained. But it has started to rain and sort of spoiled the fun. Also we reached late for a visit to the castle in the city.

Back to Tokyo in Shinkansen. I think Shinkansens would have killed the domestic airline industry of Japan. You don't have to reach early and get through the hassle of check-in and all. I will check this up. Also for tourist the tickets are a bit cheaper than for locals. This in a city where there are absolutely no bulk discounts. As we found out when we bought our Nikon 5900s from bangladeshi salesman. Same old "Bhaiya do lene hain thik rate lagao". He took his time multiplying the cost by 2. And we thought he was discounting. May be he has been too long in Japan. Or may be bangladeshi people don't have this very indian knack of bargaining, which I seriously doubt.

posted by Pankaj Jain @ 7:20 PM