I thoroughly enjoyed the few days in Niigata, and its friendly people, but it was time to move on. My next destination this morning was Nikko, a historic town 75 miles north of Tokyo, famous for its shrines. Had to change trains twice, and the last part of the trip was a charming ride uphill through mountain greenery to the town itself. An old Japanese proverb says: "He who has not seen Nikko must not use the word kek'ko" (which means "splendid, beautiful").

Roving by Rail

Travelling by rail both between cities, and by rail within cities is a highly efficient business in Japan. As the Lonely Planet book says: "Japanese rail travel is usually fast, frequent, clean, comfortable, and often very expensive." That's the reason to get the Railpass, which provdes free travel almost everywhere, but in cities it's easy to purchase tickets from the vending machines, which often provide bilingual information, from the attendants, or upgrade a ticket on the train or at the end of a journey. The trains pull into the station at the precise time and stop exactly at the marked location to allow each passenger to find the correct car and seat. There is a queuing arrangement for the trains, which I blithely ignored for the first few days, not knowing anything about it.

If you don't have a Railpass, the Shinkansen trains can be very expensive (an example of "Good, fast, cheap—choose any two"). They may not be quite up to the luxury of the German ICE trains, but provide a very comfortable means of travel nevertheless. And they're safe—in 30 years of high-speed travel there have never been any fatalities!

Hostesses come through selling beverages, snacks and ice cream, and they bow when they enter and leave each car, as do the conductors. The continually welded track smooths out the usual jolts expertienced on rail trips.

The procedure with using the JR Railpass is that you reserve your seat on the train, which is usually a Shinkansen (bullet train). The seat reservation is free. The Shinkansen have their own tracks, separate from the local trains. If you don't have a seat reserved you'll have to go to one of the "unreserved" cars—a sign above the door shows whether a car is reserved or not, and anyway the "unreserved" car numbers are announced, in English, just after the train pulls out from the station.

Something that mystified me were the raised patterns on the floors of stations (also on some streets). Apparently these raised "stripes" down the centre of a passage are for guiding blind people using canes, and at corners and stairways the stripes become dots as a warning. Tokyo stations also have Braille at the ends of the handrails on the steps to and from the platforms.

Not-so-modern Nikko

Nikko is the site of an old Buddhist monastery dating from the 8th century, and the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Shogunate. A complex of shrines was built by Ieyeshu's grandson, Iemitsu, in 1634, as a memorial to the warlord who conquered Japan, and whose family retained power for three centuries.

The small town, surrounded by ceder-covered mountains, centres on a long main street that snakes its way uphill from the station to the base of the complex of shrines. Apart from the modern area around the station, the town has rather a faded look about it, which was repeated in the hotel I found. The carpet was looking the worse for wear, the TV and video set-up looked like something out of the seventies, as if it had seen its economic hey-day some time ago (or maybe no modern developments are permitted?). The hotel had "Western-style" and "Japanese" rooms available, the latter being more expensive. I selected the Western, as I wasn't familiar with, nor prepared for, the etiquette attached to the Japanese room.

However, due to the proximity of the shrines and mausoleums, Nikko town is one of Japan's major tourist attractions. There's a peaceful feeling about the place. Although I didn't want to tempt fate too much, I felt I could leave my bags anywhere I wanted for any length of time, and they would be there upon my return.

The Great Washed Masses

My hotel has a traditional communal bath (which I didn't make use of), and this area is also famous for onsen (spa) resorts. They testify to the seriousness with which the Japanese take a visit to a hot spring. According to the statistics, nearly 150m people visit Japan’s 15,700 onsen ryokan (spa-town inns) each year; the country’s total population is 128m.

In their quest for the ultimate cleansing experience, the Japanese are unusual—in few other countries do people go on holiday for the express purpose of having a bath.

From what I've read, the Japanese are just as fastidious at home as at play. Cleanliness matters. Most have at least one bath a day; rare is the young woman who does not have at least two. Washing does not involve a superficial flick of the flannel, but a vigorous all-over scrub, often with an extremely rough nylon towel. And this before a person gets into the bath. The tub is for soaking in; heaven forbid that anybody takes a bath in scummy, soapy bath water.

A Victorian Visitor

Exactly 124 years ago a Scottish lady, Isabella Bird, arrived in Nikko. Her trip from Tokyo, 90 miles, by kuruma (rickshaw) with several runners, took 3 days. She required 3 kurumas: one for herself (supported on an air-pillow), one for her interpreter, and one for her luggage, which included a collapsable canvas bed 2.5 feet high to keep off fleas, a folding chair (no chairs in Japanese houses, and she had a bad back), a rubber bath (to preclude mixing with the locals who bathed naked), sheets and a blanket, a Mexican saddle, a good quantity of clothes, candles, a large Japanese hat, chocolate, brandy and 4 lbs. of raisins. This was the maximum that she could take as she had to travel by pack-horse to more distant places.

On travelling by kuruma, she wrote: "The runners wore straw sandals, which had to be replaced twice on the way. Blue and white towels hung from the shafts to wipe away the sweat, which ran profusely down the lean, brown bodies. The upper garment always flew behind them, displaying chests and backs elaborately tattooed with dragons and fishes."

Because married Japanese women of the time shaved their eyebrows and painted their teeth black, Ms. Bird was sometimes taken for a man, and young girls, accustomed to tales of rapine of the white man, ran away in horror.

A sudden Downpour

My plans to visit the shrines this afternoon were frustrated by a heavy downpour of rain. I reckoned I would need a couple of hours to cover the shrine complex, and this was not the afternoon to do it. Instead, I holed up in the hotel and over a take-away lunch of sea-food and salad watched whatever games were being shown on TV.

That evening, when picking up my luggage, I could not resist the delicious odours emanating from an Indian restaurant just across from the station, so I quickly returned to find it full of Irish and English fans. Enjoyed a tasty Chicken Korma.

The Beautiful Game

In the Indian restaurant we watched the Group D, South Korea-Poland game there. In an impressive display, South Korea won 2-0. South Korea controlled the game and Hwang Hun-Song had a great goal, dashing Poland's hopes. This is the first game that South Korea have won in a World Cup championship, in five World Cup attempts. One banner in the crowd said "Hiddink! Make our dream come true!" Ironically, in 1998 they lost 5-0 to a Dutch team coached by none other than Guus Hiddink, who is now their manager.

Earlier in the day, an energetic Group H encounter between Japan and Belgium ended in a 2-2 draw. Japan's draw secured their first World Cup point ever. Coach Philippe Troussier wasn't thrilled, especially when the referee waved off a late goal by Arsenal's Junichi Inamoto, but admitted that Japan's inexperience was costly. The highlights of this game were repeated on TV ad nauseum for the next few days.

In Group C, tiny Costa Rica beat China 2-0.