Mark Does Japan: Further thoughts, statistics, etc.

7 December 2025 Filed in: Travel

To answer some of the “what was best” questions. Best hotel is tough since how do you fairly compare a luxury hotel against a businessman’s hotel? Therefore the answer is

  • Oirase Keiryu Hotel by Hoshino Resorts (luxury)
  • Y’s Hotel Asahikawa Ekimae (regular)
  • Toyoko Inn Hirosaki Ekimae (businessman)

Best location for autumnal leaves: Oirase Gorge

Best castle: Matsumoto Castle

Best museum: Matsumoto City Museum of Art

Best garden: Ritsurin Koen in Takamatsu

Best Shinkansen: Gran Class Hokkaido Shinkansen (E5/H5)

Best Meal: The Saigawa Course at Atarayo Kanazawa, closely followed by the curry at Hype Cuisine & Drinks in Hirosaki but I had a number of fantastic meals in tiny restaurants.

Shinkansen count:

  • Hokkaido x 1 (I think it was JR East train on the Hokkaido track)
  • Tohoku x 1
  • Hokuriku x 3
  • Sanyo x 4 (Nozomi x 3, Kodama x 1)
  • Nishi-Kyushu x 1
  • Kyushu x 2 (Mizuho x 1, Tsubame x 1)
  • Tokaido/Sanyo x 1 (N700S based Nozumi)

Limited Express (LE) count:

  • Soya x 2
  • Lilac x 1
  • Kamui x 1
  • Tsugara x 1
  • Shinano x 1
  • Azusa x 1
  • Thunderbird x 1
  • Relay-Kamome x 1
  • Huis Ten Bosch x 1
Plus numerous local, rapid, subway, and tourist trains and some trams for a total of 62 different vehicle types.

The JR Pass (and the regional passes) don’t seem to offer any value over just buying the tickets. To makes the passes count you really need to be travelling on a Shinkansen every day of the pass and that’s nuts. Also you have to pay a supplement for a Nozumi train and the likely tourist departure/destination pairs make a Nozumi the natural choice, and the one that timetable apps/websites will chose for you. For the Shinkansen and LE trains I used the rail companies’ web sites to buy the tickets.

While the LE trains are half the speed of the Shinkansen they are still very nice trains and even the local trains can be comfortable if they aren’t packed to the rafters 🙂

Google maps worked quite well in creating a path through Tokyo (and other cities) although the connection times might have been a bit optimistic for someone hobbling and unfamiliar with the transfer stations. Like other cities the distance walked underground might have been better spent above ground or with a different choice of transfer station.

Awhile back I was asked how many photos I had taken so far, and the final count is 6,799 on the Nikon Z8, 3,573 on the iPhone and 159 more on the emergency Canon S100. The Nikon filled a 512GB card (although it already had some images on it) and I started using a 2TB card so I think it consumed about 520GB.

Comments are closed.