Last day of the trip.

My thoughts and photos are all scattered from this trip. I want to write about all that happened, but that would take ages. I think I'll start right now at the end. When viewing them later, it will make more sense, but now it seems odd. Anyways, here is the last day, which was riding from Nagoya to home.


The last day, Nagoya to Tokyo: The entire Chuo line.
My closest station is on the Chuo line and I ride it almost every day, but it goes all the way to Nagoya, which is really far. Here's where I stopped and what trains I rode.

My first train:

This says "Nagoya"

I changed trains at Nakatsugawa. There was about 1/2 hour before my train left.

The train I got on:

I had to change trains at Nagiso.

Which led me to this train.

This train was abysmal. Not the train itself, but it was full of some really creepy people. Also, because of the cold and how small the towns were, not every station had a ticket window, so people could only use the front doors of the train. Both the front and back cart smelled pretty odd, but the worst was the air was so thick, it was like breathing soup. Kind of ironic that in the mountains, with incredibly fresh air, I was stuck in a train breathing something awful.

I was happy to get to Shiroji.

The train I got on, I was at the longest. I had a 1/2 hour break in which I ate and that's it. I rushed back to make the train, so I didn't get a picture of it.

FYI.. Shiojiri with that kanji literally means "Salty butt" (塩=しお＝shio means salt　尻＝しり or in this case じり= butt). They had this lovely place that served mountain soba (buckwheat noodles) that were really good and the people were really friendly.

The train took a brief rest stop in Kofu.

This was about an hour and a half on the same train, so I was pretty sick of it by then. I grabbed a beer and a snack. That beer was one of the most satisfying ever.


Then I got to Otsuki after another hour and a half.

Otsuki is the last stop on the normal Chuo maps that I see every day, and it was also a normal Chuo train so I didn't bother to take a picture. I could have gone straight home, but near the end, every stop the doors opened as the train sat there for a minute or so and let in freezing cold air. Then after we got moving, the heat would crank up and it would be boiling and I began to look forward to the doors opening again. Then the process repeated. It was making me kind of ill, plus 3 hours on a train and one minute to change made me a bit sick of moving, so we stopped at good ol' Tachikawa.

Next stop for any logical human would have been home, but I wanted to go ALL the way down the chuo line, which ends in Tokyo station.

And that was it. Starting at about 12:20 and ending at about 10:10ish, that was a long train ride. It was an amazing trip, and I hope to write more about it (and in a more logical fashion) later, but I have to organize my pictures and thoughts any more.