On the Night Train, Part 2
Sep. 12th, 2007 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standlee[On board the JR Cassiopeia overnight sleeper from Sapporo to Tokyo Ueno, posted 14 September]
1830: We headed to the dining car for our scheduled dinner seating for which we'd paid JPY5500 each when we booked this sleeper. That was for the "Japanese" meal, not the more expensive "French" one, and I'm glad we took the Japanese meal. This elegantly-packaged meal of rice and various bits of fish, meat, and artfully-sculpted vegetables was served in stacked lacquered boxes. It was a treat, albeit an expensive one. I'm glad we did it, but I'm unsure of it being good value.
After dinner, I bought my shower reservation and we bought some souvenirs. Then we went exploring forward of the diner, where the really nice sleeping compartments are. Now these would have been even more expensive than the roughly JPY16K/person we paid for the smaller compartment. The super A compartments are two-level, with the twin bed downstairs and a sitting room and shower compartment upstairs. We were a bit annoyed to find that there was one vacant (although it's possible someone had claimed it out of Hakkodate), because we'd told the agent we'd take the best compartment available. But then we realized that this was car 2, which is a smoking car, and we'd told the agent that we wanted a non-smoking car. I don’t know whether having the nicer car would have been enough to put up with the room having been smoked in and with smokers in the other compartments. Well, we should look at the glass being half full, I guess.
1830: We headed to the dining car for our scheduled dinner seating for which we'd paid JPY5500 each when we booked this sleeper. That was for the "Japanese" meal, not the more expensive "French" one, and I'm glad we took the Japanese meal. This elegantly-packaged meal of rice and various bits of fish, meat, and artfully-sculpted vegetables was served in stacked lacquered boxes. It was a treat, albeit an expensive one. I'm glad we did it, but I'm unsure of it being good value.
After dinner, I bought my shower reservation and we bought some souvenirs. Then we went exploring forward of the diner, where the really nice sleeping compartments are. Now these would have been even more expensive than the roughly JPY16K/person we paid for the smaller compartment. The super A compartments are two-level, with the twin bed downstairs and a sitting room and shower compartment upstairs. We were a bit annoyed to find that there was one vacant (although it's possible someone had claimed it out of Hakkodate), because we'd told the agent we'd take the best compartment available. But then we realized that this was car 2, which is a smoking car, and we'd told the agent that we wanted a non-smoking car. I don’t know whether having the nicer car would have been enough to put up with the room having been smoked in and with smokers in the other compartments. Well, we should look at the glass being half full, I guess.
