Japan’s favorite way to travel has its own special day on October 14. Railway Day, or Tetsudo no Hi, is a celebration of the railroads and is also the anniversary of the opening of the country’s first railroad.
It wasn’t until after I’d arrived in Tokyo that I realized why I’d wanted to go there for so long. It was because I’d read too much science fiction as a teenager.
When famed haiku poet Matsuo Basho traveled Japan in 1689 he found himself at a loss for words when he first saw the hundreds of pine forest-covered islands of Matsushima Bay in the Tohoku region. Eventually, he came up with those words and wrote about it in his poetic travel log, “Narrow Road to the Deep North.”
When traveling within mainland Japan, the two most common transportation cards are PASMO and SUICA. Both cards allow you to use most of the trains and buses within Japan.
