Two days out of Kakegawa, where a one-car train is still turned by hand

The Nozomi does not stop at Kakegawa. It goes through the station at full speed, and the Kodama that does stop pulls in a few minutes later with half its seats empty, which is the first honest thing this part of Shizuoka tells you about itself.

Day one: west on a single car

The Tenryū Hamanako Railroad — the Tenhama Line, if you ask at the counter — leaves from the north side of Kakegawa station, one diesel car at a time, and takes most of two hours to reach Shinjōhara on the far side of Lake Hamana. It runs behind the towns rather than through them: tea rows, the white plastic of greenhouses, long stops where the only sound is the door motor.

Break the ride at Tenryū-Futamata. Behind the platform stand a wooden roundhouse and a turntable that is still pushed around by hand, and the station runs short tours of both. Most of the buildings on this line went up in the late 1930s and carry the small plaque of a registered tangible cultural property, waiting-room benches worn pale, more than one of them now selling coffee at the end of the platform.

Day two: north into the tea

Kanaya is two stops back toward Tokyo on the Tōkaidō main line, and across the forecourt sits Shin-Kanaya, where the Ōigawa Railway keeps steam locomotives in working order. The train climbs the Ōi River valley to Senzu on old coaching stock, windows down, coal smoke drifting back along the carriages on the curves.

One stop further, at Shimada, the same river is crossed by Hōraibashi, a wooden footbridge just under 900 metres long with a coin toll at the gate. It was built for tea farmers walking out to the Makinohara plateau, and the plateau is still up there above the far bank, ruled into green rows to the horizon.

None of this is a detour. It is the part of Shizuoka the fast train has agreed not to look at.

Making the two days work

Kakegawa is roughly two hours from Tokyo by Kodama and holds a handful of plain business hotels within sight of the station, which is all this itinerary asks for. Buy the Tenhama Line day ticket at its own small counter rather than paying stop to stop, and check the steam timetable before you commit a morning to it; the service runs to a fixed schedule that thins outside the busy months. If a train leaves you with an hour, the castle keep north of the station was rebuilt in wood in the 1990s and is ten minutes on foot.

こだましか停まらない駅に、まだ時間の残っている町がある。