Hands down, the greatest train experience I’ve ever had!
In 2022, Japan released renovated older diesel trains, themed them and put them back into the wild throughout Japan. They refer to these as the Joyful trains. This included the High Rail 1375, SL Ginga, SL Gunma, FruiTea Fukashima and others.
High Rail 1375, so what’s so cool about this train?
Well, for starters, it has a planetarium onboard. Got your interest? Good. This train runs on the highest train line, the Koumi line, at 1,375 meters above sea level, in Japan and goes between Komoro Station and Kobuchizawa Station, passing through the highest station of Noyoga Station. It has a mini planetarium on board to look at stars with a library. There is a little shop onboard for merchandise (stickers, key rings, tea towels), snacks, wine, sake & beer. If you choose to take the stargazing trip you can add on a special dinner pack that is themed to suit.
Cost(s): ¥840 yen (+ basic ticket if you don’t have a JR Pass)
Timetable: Click here for the timetable.
Journey Time: 2 – 3.5 hours (this includes the stargazing session).
Have a JR Rail Pass? Perfect! You still require a reserved seat. Go to any station, to use a JR booking machine and search for your desired trip (depending on which way you want to go). I would suggest booking seats in D row, they are single luxurious seats that face out the window on an angle. You can turn them to face inwards towards each other. Seats A & B are little booths, sitting side by side facing out the window with a table.
We decided to do it twice, to take advantage of the stargazing session upon return. You’ll understand why as you read on. Firstly we took the train from Komoro Station to Kobuchizawa Station. It was a beautiful day, the sun shining on the mountain edges, the trees changing shades of green across the hills, and local farmers in the field. We had views of Mt. Fuji, waterfalls, small prefectures and villages. We stopped at Nobeyama Station, the highest station in Japan for some photos with the signpost stating this. One or two other stops had short (~10-minute) breaks, if you take note of the timetable you’ll be able to identify which ones so you can jump off to stretch your legs and see the local station.
Your next stop will be Nobeyama Station for another photo shoot.
Take a walk around the train, and notice all the decorative styles from wallpaper, ceilings and lights. Head up to the gallery to stand in the planetarium.
Inside the planetarium, you can look up to the skies and see the star constellations while listening to relaxing (elevator) music. There are also some books you can borrow to read on your journey.
We hopped off at Kobuchizawa Station and headed to a soba noodle-based restaurant, Irifune Shokudo, for dinner. We had around 30 minutes before having to get back onto the High Rail 1375. The service was quick and the food was delicious. The shop owner spoke little English but we’re happy to see tourists making the effort of speaking basic Japanese. It must be a common thing as they were concerned we were going to miss the last train out of Yamanashi. Luckily we worked out that we were waiting on a special service train (High Rail 1375) so it didn’t apply. Definitely worth visiting Irifune Shokudo for the freshest local produce. A very small place and very affordable.
So we jumped back onto the High Rail 1375 once more, at Kobuchizawa Station. It was dark by now, the views had disappeared. So with a beer in hand, we relaxed. Along the way, a tour guide handed out a stargazing map to all passengers and started the tour. It was in Japanese and as we don’t speak fluent Japanese we didn’t get to understand any of it. But he made the effort to come over afterwards and sit down to help write out some names of the star constellations. Stopping at Nobeyama Station, the highest station in Japan, we disembarked and followed the tour guide to Ginga Park. It’s pretty dark and freezing cold (around 5 degrees celsius). The tour guide then (from what we could interpret) was pointing out all the star constellations and provided further information on them. As we didn’t understand Japanese, I installed the Stellarium Mobile app which allows you to use Augmented Reality to see the star constellations which allows us to join in and understand.
We stopped here for around 45 minutes (the timetable factors this stop-in) before getting back onto the (warm) train and heading off. As we wanted to head back to Toyko that night, we swapped trains earlier and made it back to Tokyo by ~11:45 PM.
Overall, this was a lot of fun. A great way to see the country side, experience some of Japan’s quirky approach towards life, the past and the future. I would do this all over again.