Shinkansen Day!

From Rusutsu we made our way to Kyoto…a mere 1500km away! Thanks to the bullet trains the trip was relatively fast. Our morning started at the reasonable hour of 10am when we were picked up by taxi to be transferred to Toya station.

From Toya station we boarded the limited express train to Shin Hakodate Hokuto station. We skirted Urchiura Bay finishing at the Shinkansen station with the 140km trip taking 1 hour 49mins. At the station, we simply crossed the platform to the Hayabasa Shinkansen.

 

With a top speed of 320km/h (although not for the whole time) this part of the trip to Sendai took around 2 hours 30mins. The northern island of Hokkaido is connected to Honshu by the Seikan tunnel. The Shinkansen reduces speed significantly while in the 53km tunnel. Our research on this tunnel revealed some surprising facts - we were 240m below the surface of the Tsugaru Strait; it is the longest undersea tunnel in the world; after a decade of planning, the  tunnel construction began from both sides in 1972; these tunnels joined in 1982 however the tunnel was officially opened in 1988 with the first Shinkansen operating in 2019 and the overall cost was 1.1 trillion yen (12 times over budget!) Future plans include extending the Shinkansen line to Sapporo (by 2031) covering the 1100km trip from Tokyo in around 4 and a half hours.

At Sendai, we changed to the Yamabiko Shinkansen for the final 250km leg to Utsunomiya. We got a little confused here as we only had an 8min changeover and on arrival we couldn’t find our train listed on the board. After enquiring, a conductor indicated to board the current train on the platform which we did. We assumed this train had replaced our train and sat in our reserved seats only to challenged by others holding the same seat tickets! We quickly departed and made our way to the next carriage which was unreserved and made ourselves at home.

The train rolled into Utsunomiya as the sun was setting. We had specifically chosen this place due to the conveniently located hotel within 3 minutes of the station. Andy and Ella wanted to go for a run while Katy and I retreated to the rooftop to enjoy an outdoor onsen! Andy had spotted a potential dinner spot on his run. It turns out to be a great spot.