[hoipaloi]

I did this by accident from Tokyo to Kyoto. My idea was that I didn't want to take a bullet train to Kyoto and what I wanted was a slower train with a restaurant and a bar car. So without speaking Japanese I tried to buy that ticket, and the train office were slightly surprised then they did the ticket processing to make it happen. Turns out what I got was a local train all the way to kyoto. It fucking sucked. It was like riding a subway train for 11 hours. There was no restroom ,it was cold, the seats were uncomfortable and there was no food. When I think back on it, I don't know why I just did't quit. For food at a station I ran to get a bento within five minutes. At another station I raced to use the toilet. My eventual destination was Suntory distillery in Yamazaki and I got to drink 25 year old whisky so eventually it got better, but if you made it this far, yeah I had a good idea, that turned out to be stupid and I stuck with it because I don't know why.

[paganel]

Just wanted to say that trains without restrooms are the work of the devil. Actually access to restrooms is one of the major things which makes me prefer trains over buses, that and being able to read on a train because on a bus I get car-sickness pretty quickly if I try do to that.

[lostlogin]

This is hilarious - a write up with photos would beat the London Bus journey. Well done and commiserations.

Travel in foreign lands seems to regularly break down at ticket offices.