The trip from Yokohama to Tohoku and back began at 4:40 a.m. at a local bus stop — where we lined up with a surprisingly large crowd and some early-rising mosquitoes — and ended aboard a reserved-seat green car that pulled into Yokohama Station, having freed us from battling for space on the last leg of our long train journey. In between, my 11-year-old son and I were on a five-day trip that took us to the cities of Sendai and Ishinomaki in Japan’s northeast region. The catch: We could ride only local trains, a constraint of Japan Railway’s Seishun 18 ticket, which can be used during set periods every spring, summer and winter.
The ticket, which debuted in 1982, holds legendary status among rail-travel fans (while seishun means “youth,” there is no age limit). But a host of rule changes deployed in 2024 took the wind out of its pantographs. I planned this journey to put the revamped version to the test, convinced I could make it worthwhile despite the objectively worse conditions.
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