The train we’d boarded in Kitakami was a local shinkansen, stopping at all stations, and with a long haul ahead of us, we were going to change to a limited express at Sendai, a prospect which evoked visions of a frantic rush up and down escalators, of mistaken platforms and all sorts of potential disasters.
The reality? We alighted, walked no more than twenty metres and we were standing at the relevant embarkation point for the next train which was due in about seven minutes. The weather had become bleak and overcast after blue skies further north, and the platform at Sendai was considerably colder than Kitakami, which we’d left an hour and a half earlier and had been quite cold enough, thank you very much.
After Sendai, the mountains (or reasonably large hills) were much closer to the line, and in some places we passed virtual oceans of sakura, though the trees were not yet totally in bloom. At the same time the weather closed in, bringing drizzly rain, the weather that in the hills around Hakone had seemed mystic and mysterious, but in the lowlands was merely dreary and dismal.
I noted with interest that in some areas of the cities we passed through where there weren’t too many buildings over two storeys high, the landscape was dominated by the nets surrounding the golf-driving ranges, structures I’d been noticing for days without realising what they were till we passed one in the car the day before and the mystery was solved.
Arriving and alighting in Tokyo we ran into the couple we were meeting for lunch straight away, more by good luck than good management, wandered off for a decent Italian lunch at Papa Milano, beside the station, and returned for the final shinkansen leg to Kobe.
The major question, of course, was the possibility of sighting Mount Fuji, and we had momentary thoughts of trying our luck and seeing if we could grab a starboard side window seat in one of the non-reserved carriages, but that would have involved queuing in conditions that were even colder than we’d experienced further north at Kitakami and Sendai, so we took the soft option, standing in the heated waiting room on the platform while the cleaners prepared the train for departure before taking up our reserved seats.
We had seats 15B&C in car 14, with 15A vacant, but, given the number of passengers on the train it seemed highly unlikely our luck would last.
The spare seat remained vacant when the train pulled into Shinagawa, and as we left the Tokyo high-rise behind, looking away to the right there was no sign of any mountains whatsoever away to the west.
At Yokohama the vacant seat was occupied, and Madam’s interest was sparked as mountains came into view to the west, but the conditions limited visibility as we sped past Odawara and into Atami.
The mountain gods, it seemed, had still not relented.
As we continued southwards the weather improved as we passed what could well have been (judging by the angle of the lower slopes) the bottom of Mount Fuji, though the top was shrouded in the sort of mist that meant we couldn’t be sure.
“Never mind,” we told ourselves. “Gives us something to look forward to next time.”
Back in Kobe we made our way to the Crowne Plaza Hotel, conveniently situated next door to Shin-Kobe station, checked in and headed into the neighbouring shopping complex for dinner before heading back to the room where free access to the internet from within the room (in most other places you had to stand up at a terminal in the lobby) gave me a leisurely opportunity to clear some of the backlog of email that had accumulated since we’d left home.