Photopost: Riding the Tadami Line

Back in January, Shinsuke and I were taking a trip to Aizu-Wakamatsu via the Tadami line. The idea then was to see the scenery in the middle of nowhere in Niigata and Fukushima covered in snow. Unfortunately, as I wrote then, we completely FAILED in our quest BECAUSE there was so much snow that the line got snowed in.

That time, we also took a side trip to Doai and Yubiso stations because they are interesting; the way that particular line runs, going out of Tokyo, you go through a really big tunnel, and coming back into Tokyo, you go on a line outside that takes an incline down by going in circles and crossing over its own track. Doai in particular has a 420-step staircase going between the upper and lower stations, which took us 10 minutes to descend, and supposedly takes like 20 to ascend at least.

This time, we did no such thing, and started our trip at 9am instead of 6am.

Shin had an "unlimited local train riding" pass as part of 鉄道の日, the anniversary of the JR train lines, or something like that, on October 14 1872. So we could ride unlimited local trains all day for 3000 yen or so, and thus go to Fukushima in a huge loop like this and come back and all. (The ticket lasted until Oct 17th, which is why we went on Sunday.)

( Cut for tons of train photos and Japanese countryside scenery )