[S-series] Japan Winter train tour with JR Rail Pass – Part 1

Hello

This is another post about our travels. We’ve been travelling to Japan a lot (and I LOVE IT) but the wife is wants to go somewhere else so… stay tuned, if you’re a fan. Thank you very very much.

This time around, we travelled from the last day of December 2022 to 2nd week of January 2023. Trying to experience winter in Honshu, Japan. This trip was initially going to be in Hokkaido, the Northern land of powder snow. But the wife chickened out, we being tropical animals, the biting cold isn’t really a thing in our book. So instead of hiking frozen lakes, I opt-ed for the comfort of the Japanese trains.

We bought our JR Rail Passes online (not from 3rd party sites i.e. Klook/KKDay) so that we can have the benefit of booking our trips online. I usually plan our trips based on Claire’s whims so our first day involves trying to take the Sunrise Izumo overnight train to Izumo. Why Izumo you say? Well more on that later… Let me just list the places we went:

1. Izumo, Shimane Prefecture
2. Takayama, Gifu Prefecture
3. Kawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture
4. Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture

Seems like a rather short list doesn’t it? I still had to rack my brain to make the connections between cities as seamless as possible. Sorry I can’t drive, in case you’re wondering. Driving has its perks as well as its woes, I prefer to just hop on and off a train and not worrying about parking and stuff. Luckily there are a lot of sites available to help with the train schedules etc. I generally used Jorudan even though for some reason, they don’t give me the arrival/departure timing of the trains… There is also Hyperdia if you prefer it. And from my research, I found out that Sunrise Izumo is fully booked as soon as the dates open up for booking. I guess the locals booked it up before it’s available on the JR Rail Pass site…

So instead, we took the Ltd Exp train Yakumo from Okayama station. The great thing about Japanese trains is that you generally are allow to eat on them, unlike Singapore. In fact, eating a bento on train is a thing, most major stations will have ‘Ekiben’ stalls on the platform. ‘Eki’ means station and ‘Ben’ is short for ‘Bento’. Boxed lunches sold at train stations. I love them! Convenient and tasty! Some might complain its cold and stale, some stalls will offer to microwave it for you if you like.

Back to the train: Yakumo is an old but cute train that runs from Okayama to Izumo. It took us around 4 hrs to cover that distance. It weaves through the mountainous central Japan covering 3 prefectures, Okayama, Tottori and Shimane. To get to Okayama, we took the airport train Ltd Exp Haruka from Kansai Airport to Shin-Osaka, then transfer to Shinkansen Hikari (very fast) to Okayama where we took Yakumo. We had our lunch on one of them trains, I can’t remember which one, and slept on the Yakumo. I did enjoy the change of scenery from cityscape to mountainous river valleys to snow covered forests to glimpses of the Sea of Japan.

We arrived in the evening at Izumo city, so we went straight to our hotel and called it a night. Dinner was bentos from konbinis, a favourite of ours. Don’t judge us, we’re not fussy with food.

We only booked a night’s stay at Izumo, mainly here to visit Izumo Taisha:

Izumo Taisha was crowded with Japanese visitors on their first shrine visit of the year (Hatsumōde ), these few days major shrines and buddhist temples will be crowded as they make their wishes for the new year. We’re fully aware of this but well we wanted to try blending in, so we also bought talismans (omamori) like the locals. We explore the grounds and were thoroughly fascinated by the gigantic twisted straw shimenawa hanging above us at the main shrine.

After which we made our way to Inasa Beach visit Benten-jima, a small shrine sits on the rock that is Benten-jima. I read up on the legend linked to the beach, the White Rabbit of Inaba, but the different accounts were quite confusing in that some mentioned Inasa beach and others say eastern park of Tottori prefecture… Well no matter. We witness people collecting sand from the base of the rock (Benten-jima), it is a tradition linked to the rabbit.

The story was that a rabbit tricked the shark clan and was flayed by the sharks. It met the Shinto Deity Okuninushi and his brothers on the way to woo the beautiful Yagami-hime. The wounded rabbit asked them for help, but the mean brothers told it to wash its wounds in sea water, which was really painful. Okuninushi was kind though, he told the rabbit to wash in the fresh water river and cover itself in cattail pollens. The rabbit healed up nicely and told Okuninushi that he will be the one to marry Yagami-hime, and marry he did. Well there’s more to this myth, but you’ll have to google it yourself.

We walked back to the shopping area in front of Izumo Taisha, but most stalls are already closing for the day. We had a bowl of sweet Zenzai and catch the retro train back to Izumoshi station. And that is the end of our short time here in Izumo. Too short.

-Simon Tey