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.