I find it hard to sleep on public transport. Always have. Too risky. I’m not the kind of person who can miraculously wake themselves up two minutes before the right stop.
The only transport I can sleep on is planes – there’s only one destination to worry about. Even so, it’s hard to shake the feeling that someone might draw on your face as they wander back from the loo.
Travelling on a night bus was never going to be easy.
Needs must, though. If you need to travel reasonable distances in Japan, a bus is often cheapest. Maybe not as comfortable or speedy as a bullet train, but about half the price. For the budget-conscious traveller, there’s no contest.
My trip was with Willer Express. A name that’s surprisingly hard to pronounce in Japanese. Considering how often you’ll hear the ‘thank you for choosing Willer’ message, you’d think they’d have gone with something easier.
They cater to tourists really well, and I appreciate that. The on-board announcements were in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean. The first one was so long, I expected to reach our first stop before it ended.
We stopped roughly every two hours for loo breaks. To give credit to Japan here, their service stations tend to look better than ours. And they have better names -‘Welcome Break’ isn’t a patch on ‘Neopasa’.
I found myself groggily shuffling through a futuristic-looking toilet block at 2.00am. A digital anime loo attendant waved at us from a flatscreen. A massive LED clock blinked out the ungodly hour, with a frankly rude brightness level.
It’s better to be awake for these things, as there could be six or seven identical buses parked out front. Get back on the wrong one and there’s no telling where you’ll end up.
Just as you think you might finally get some shut-eye, you’ll realise you’ve arrived. And that it’s already 8.00am.
You’ll step off the bus, older and somehow wiser. The will of the Willer bus is that you get something out of the whole experience. Which, in all likelihood, is more bags under your eyes.
