How to take the Bullet Train

 I had the chance to go to Yokosuka and took the Shin (also known as the high-speed Bullet Train) most of the way there.  This post is especially for my sister, who is going to come and visit me and she will have to take the train from Fukuoka to Iwakuni.

This is what it looks like at the Shin-Iwakuni station.  It is a smaller station, so you can't get too lost.  That is the train coming in.

 I thought these seat back info signs were nice.  It tells you what facilities are in each of the train cars.  So if you need to find a bathroom, you know where to look for one.

This is me, walking all over Yokosuka off base and having a lovely time. 

These are the 3 tickets for my trip home.  One to show the fare, one for the train ride from Shinagawa to Hiroshima, where I had to change trains, and one for that second train ride from Hiroshima to Shin-Iwakuni.

Once you get the tickets, you have to pass through a turnstile, and it wants your tickets.  If you know which one it wants, you put it in.  I am not that advanced and the one time I did put my ticket in, it didn't come back.  There is typically a little window with helpful people in uniforms there and if you show them your tickets they will either tell you which one to put in the machine, or will hand tag it for you and pass you through.  I love nice people! 

The Shin has reserved and unreserved seats.  For this trip, I had a reserved seat from Shinagawa to Hiroshima, but unreserved from Hiroshima to Shin-Iwakuni.  Reserved means you are on a specific train car and have an assigned seat.  The only downside to this is that if you miss your train, you are out of luck and have to buy a whole new ticket.  The unreserved seat lets you travel on that train any time and any day for the next 7 days (I think.)

This is my reserved seat ticket.  The numbers in parentheses are the train departure and arrival times. So I know that my train leaves at 13:57 (or 1:57pm) and arrives at 17:56 (or 5:56pm).  The unreserved seat has no times on it because you are not limited to a time.

Under the time and a little to the right you can see  "4   12  E"  That is for train car #4, seat 12E.

I think this is the overall fare card. Kind of the receipt, but I think they take this back when you reach your destination. This is the one the machine sucked up and did not return.

The Bullet Train at Hiroshima. 

There are little food kiosks at the station.  However, they seem to like to make your connections a little too tight to have time to grab a bite to eat when you have a reserved ticket! 

They do have signs and they blink back and forth in Japanese and English.  This one tells you the info for Track #12  It says a Hakata Train will come through and depart at 6:02pm.  I can't read the destination though! 

Usually the first 3 train cars are unreserved seats.  You can see the "1" by the door, denoting this as car #1.  The red writing that you can't see unless you biggify the picture says "non-reserved" 

I like this feature a lot!  This is on the ground by the track. It tells you what will be stopping in this specific spot. The yellow tile indicates that car #6 on a 16 car train will be stopping here.  The green tile tells you that the Kodoma line has an 8 car train coming through and car #2 will stop right here.  This is great because you can make sure you are standing in the right spot, because the trains only stop for a minute or two.