We arrived more than one hour early but used that opportunity to observe how the Japanese Shinkansen are opperated. That was really impressive! We went up to our track and there a Shinkansen Nozomi (super express train between Tokyo and Hakata) arrived and left every 20 minutes. EXACTLY every 20 minutes. It was super interesting to watch what happened in these 20 minutes:
- Train arrives at the station. Travellers leave the train.
- The cleaning staff hurries into the train, 3 people per carriage. 1 of them disappears (we guess that one cleans the toilets), the others work in the carriage. First, they turn around every row of seats since Tokyo station is a terminal (German: Sackbahnhof). That's right: they turn the seats around so that ever passenger faces the direction of travel no matter in which direction the train is headed. After that, they change the towel covering each headrest. Then they dust off the seats and clean the floor.
- The cleaning staff leaves the train and one of them alerts the driver of the train that they have finished. The whole cleaning process takes about 10-12 minutes.
- In the remaining 4-5 minutes, the passengers enter the train. Before that, they formed a queue in the designated space marked on the platform for each door - since every train stops at the exact same spot the numbers of the carriages are marked on the platform, too, and the passengers can immediately enter the right carriage.
- The doors of the train (and on the platform, there is a barrier which keeps people from falling into the track bed) close and the train departs at the designated leaving time.
- 2-3 minutes later, the next train arrives and the whole process begins again.
You might also be wondering about the degree of capacity utilisation since not only these 3 trains per hour leave for this route, but other trains with more stops, too. From what we saw, the trains are very much used, more than half the seats were usually taken right from Tokyo station.
However, the trains are still very comfortable to use. You get a LOT of legroom in the Shinkansen. 4k didn't have any space to put her luggage up on the luggage rack (1k's luggage was already there), but she could easily put it in front of her and still sit quite comfortably! This, too, is something you cannot imagine in a German ICE. Also, the English announcements before arriving at the next station where infintely better than the funny announcements you frequently hear when travelling in an IC(E).
We are deeply impressed with the way the Japanese operate the Shinkansen and cannot recommend it highly enough. We sincerely hope that we get the chance to travel this way again!
Since our arrival at the hotel in Osaka we didn't do very much yet. We registered for the Go camp today and walked a bit through the city center. There, we also took a ride in a Ferris wheel mounted on top of an eight floor house (yes, that's right - always expect the unexpected when it comes to Japan!). The view was quite nice and like this we already got a glimpse of Osaka Castle which we will visit on another day, too.
At the camp registration we learned that almost 60 people registered for the Osaka Go camp this year - about 50% of them are from China, among them are a few 7d if we remember correctly (!). The remaining 50% consist of German and French participants (one quarter of the camp participants) and a few other nationalities such as Colombia. We also got a white paper fan to collect the autographs of the pros who will come to the camp and our name badge. Again, we got new ranks (since the participants com from pretty much all around the world, the teachers figured out the ranks) and we are curious to find out tomorrow if ours are correct!
See you then! :-)
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