So, on this week’s installment of “shit I learned reading comic books online”:
Well, one of the minor headaches that I had was trying to figure out which Alfa Romeo model Haruka was shotgunning in -
Was it a 4c? (Jesus that’s a sexy car, but that’s not a coupe and not a hatchback, the production run is small and I doubt many entered Japan)
Stelvio? (Nah, too big).
Was it a MiTo? It’s probably perfect as a Japan friendly supermini but the tail-lights doesn’t look like that.
So, it looks like it’s a
Type 940 Giulietta.
Okay,
Yoshida tea garden (1181 Otsutsumi, Koga, Ibaraki 306-0236) is definitely a thing - and it sits on the other side of the Yanaka collection ponds and the Watarase river (渡良瀬川). Watarase river is the border between Saitama 埼玉 (where Sano was located) and Ibaraki 茨城 prefectures. Yeah, they are fairly well known and you can actually
order their black teas from their shopify site, and they do offer guided tours (unfortunately only in Japanese and only under reservation).
For those who are wondering why there are trains running at the edge of the tea plantation, the
JR East Shonan-Shinjuku line runs right past it. If you have been to Tokyo and did the Yamanote line ring around the central wards of Tokyo, some trains running on the west side (the Yamate side) stopping at places like Shibuya, Shinjuku and Shin-Okubo feature orange-and-green stripes. Those are the Shonan-Shinjuku line trains. They go quite the distance from Kagohara, Omiya or Utsonomiya up north, past Western/Central Tokyo, down past Osaki, Yokohama and onto the Sagami bay area (sometimes it's Odawara, sometimes it's Ofuna, it could be Zushi or even Kamakura - it depends on the run). For the Tokyo bay region it’s an important north-south route in the JR east system…think Metro North/LIRR for New York, Marmaray for Istanbul or Thameslink / Elizabeth line for Londoners. A similar North-South rail line for the eastern wards of Tokyo will be the Cyan striped Keihin-Tohoku line.
As for the
JR East Train Suite Shiki-Shima 四季島 excursion train? Yeah, it’s real, it does run past the tea plantation northbound from Ueno, and
it’s even featured on an episode of James May’s Amazon Prime series Our Man in Japan. If you want to spend some serious money travelling Japan’s Tohoku region, you can’t go wrong with that. Although most seats are sold through lottery and are booked out in advance (I’ve tried for the past 3 years with no luck).