Archived:NightOnTheGalacticRailroad

This is Lmm's crazy plan, that attempts to combine trains, lots of trains, with getting to Japan.

• Day 0, Friday: Dudes gather in and around London.
• Day 1, Saturday: Train to Paris/Brussels/Cologne and a day there. Overnight train to, let's say Warsaw. We could get to Moscow by Monday morning on a direct train, but the trans-siberian doesn't leave until Tuesday evening.
• Day 2, Sunday: Warsaw, explore it, overnight train to Kiev
• Day 3, Monday: Kiev, explore it, overnight train to Moscow
• Day 4, Tuesday: Moscow, explore it, get on the big train in evening
• Day 10, Monday: Beijing, explore it, overnight train to Shanghai
• Day 11, Tuesday: Shanghai, explore it very briefly, ferry at 2pm
• Day 13, Thursday: Arrive in Osaka at 9am, uh, day in osaka
• Day 14, Friday: Kyoto, maybe?
• Day 15, Saturday: One glorious day in Tokyo, or something
• Day 16, Sunday: Morning in Toyko, and fly home.

Let's see if there are any efficiency savings to be had from doing it in reverse:

• Day 16, Sunday: Train to Cologne, then Brussels and Eurostar home; we have about 6 hours to spend in one or other on the way.
• Day 15, Saturday: Get the 8AM train from Moscow, overnight to Berlin.
• Day 14, Friday: Arrive in Moscow at ~6PM, spend the night there
• Day 8, Saturday: Day in Beijing, train in the evening
• Day 7, Friday: Bah. Ferry only arrives on a Thursday, leaving on Tuesday midday, so again we only get like 4 days in Japan this way.

Let's look at it another way: suppose we wanted to go to Japan and other places, how much holiday time would we need?

• Day n, Sunday: Morning in Tokyo, fly home
• Day n-1, Saturday: Let's say we're doing this at Comiket. Comiket!
• Day n-2, Friday: Mickey Comikets early. Other people go do something cultural.
• Day n-3, Thursday: Tokyo, and all its joys.
• Day n-4, Wednesday: Kyoto! History!
• Day n-5, Tuesday: Osaka! Accents!
• Day n-6, Monday: Arrive Osaka, 09:30, rest weary selves, go to a hot springs or something.
• Day n-8, Saturday: A little Shanghai in the morning, ferry at 13:00.
• Day n-9, Friday: I'm going to say spend this in Shanghai, and stay night in Shanghai.
• Day n-10, Thursday: Day in Beijing, sleeper to Shanghai.

Eek, the only good train runs tuesday to monday.

So, best option would be to extend the original plan above by a bit at the end. Constraints: if going out, train is tuesday -> monday, and ferry is tuesday from shanghai - so not much time in shanghai. If coming back, train goes wed -> mon (at 2:28pm, plausible flying time), ferry could arrive sunday (leaving japan on Friday). So a plausible itinerary would look something like:

• Friday evening: Gather
• Saturday hideously early morning: Planes to Japan
• Sunday morning: Arrive in Tokyo, spend some time there and in Osaka.
• Friday midday: Get ferry from Osaka
• Sunday midday: Arrive in Shanghai, spend a day and a half or so there
• Monday night (say): overnight train to Beijing, spend a day and a half there
• Wednesday morning, 8AM: get the big train
• Monday afternoon: Arrive Moscow. Lamers could at this point fly home, meaning they'd only need 2 weeks + 1 day off work; otherwise we could take the rest of the week slowly crossing Europe.