'Training' in Tokyo

NEWFANGLED VERBING there for the railway conveyance. Wordsmithing gone awry, yet – to me – a most fitting vignette of the axis of mobility in the Japanese capital, arguably in all the metropolitan centers of the nation.    

Training – as in traveling by train – makes an incredibly total experience in Tokyo, running the gamut from exhaustion to exhilaration.

The sheer expanse of Shinjuku Station, the world’s busiest train station in terms of passenger volume: some 3.5 million commuters daily, is a daunting challenge to one’s sense of space, patience, and yes, athleticism. What with the ever-flowing never-ebbing waves upon waves of salarymen, foreign and local tourists, ordinary commuters onrushing to multi-level platforms of its dozen train lines; ending up during rush hours verily like packed sardines. A dire need of orienteering skills too, the station being veritably a labyrinth of shopping arcades, cafes and restaurants, even haberdasheries, and whatnots.     

                                                    Commuter rush at Shinjuku Station

There is all truth to that vlog I chanced upon once propounding: How to master navigating Shinjuku Station. And the vlogger himself retorting: “You can’t!”

He is right. The voluminous flow of people passing through it, its complexity further compounded by the seemingly never-ending renovations and new constructions are sure to confound even the station habitues.   

Less packed with commuters than Shinjuku, Tokyo Station is busier, in fact, the busiest in all of Japan, in number of scheduled trains: 4,000 arriving and departing daily, including the Shinkansen, making the station the gateway to the capital.

Tokyo Station evokes a sense of magnificence and grandeur with its red-brick façade and iconic domes blending Western architecture and Japanese aesthetics. Behold the station’s splendor enhanced at various times of the day with its backdrop of glass and concrete skyscrapers alternately shimmering, gleaming, glowing from the sun’s rays.  

For in-city subway operations, there’s Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway which we alternately took to different destinations, almost always the trains SRO.

Koenji for our thrift-shopping – now a must-do activity in every Japan trip.

Harajuku for immersion in kawaii culture, a taste of Japanese crepes – Marion is the best, for shoes, and that new wonder that is Harakado or the Tokyu Plaza Harajuku, a majestic edifice of glass, steel and cement seemingly jaggedly cut on top to reveal a tropical forest. 

Roppongi Hills for the fantastic Christmas illumination along the stretch of Keyakizaka Street with Tokyo Tower at the endpoint. 

Shibuya Scramble, enough to pen a sophomoric haiku: 

nth time crossing – 

still the thrill, that chill

hachiko waiting. 

 

The hustle and bustle of the Metro Tokyo stations quiet down to the relaxed rural atmosphere of the suburban stations on weekdays. Beware though, crowded tourist traps they too become on weekends. 

The Hakone Tozan Railway has the steepest mountain climb in Japan. Scaling the sharp inclines requires zigzagging climb with what they call the “switchback” at three locations with the driver and conductor switching places. Arriving at Gora station, take the cable car to Souzan station then transfer to the ropeway to Owakudani, where you can observe volcanic activity in its sulfur vents and hot springs, whence the delicacy kuro tamago (black eggs) are boiled. 

Descend Owakudani via ropeway anew to Togendai by Lake Ashi. Cruise the placid lake by pirate ship. Disembark at Moto-Hakone, go on a contemplative walk then a steep climb to Hakone Jinja Shrine amid a dense forest. Descend to the Torii of Peace on the very bank of the lake to cap a deep, if brief, sense of mindfulness. 

The day’s extraordinary riding experience on trains, cable car, ropeway, and ship ends with a bus ride to Hakone-Yumoto Station.  

Two hours out of Shinjuku Station is Tubo-Nikko via the JR Limited Express. Dispensed with the bus ride and walked for 8.2 kilometers to the vermillion Shinkyo Bridge by the entrance to the Nikko World Heritage Park where autumn colors are in full glory. The park is home to shrines and temples accessible through stone steps that seemingly get steeper at each succeeding level. Alas, it was too much for our – the wife’s and mine – septuagenarian knees, stopping less than halfway the 207 steps to Toshogu Shrine, the burial place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of his eponymous shogunate. 

Then, there’s Kawagoe, about an hour by the Seibu Line from Shinjuku. Dubbed Little Edo, Kawagoe is walk back in time to the old capital with its well-preserved clay warehouses and merchant homes. The three-storey wood Toki-no-kane (time bell tower) that rings four times daily has become the symbol of the city itself. Taking its niche as Kawagoe’s very own is the Starbucks in an old warehouse a few meters from the bell tower. Brown for the usual green, the branding is inscribed in wood at the main entrance framed by a noren (the slit curtain usually found at the entrance of Japanese restaurants) printed with the mermaid logo in brown too. A pocket garden on the side and a larger one at the back perfect the Japanese makeover of this Starbucks. 

Hakone. Nikko. Kawagoe. It is in these out-of-Tokyo weekday sojourns when there are more seats than passengers, that the journey – training, in this wise – truly becomes as fulfilling as the destinations. 

Train on.