The Wind Changes Temperature at Every Tunnel
The moment the train breaks out of a tunnel's darkness, cold canyon air sweeps between the seats and the sound of the river surges up. The Kurobe Gorge Railway runs open carriages with no windows at all. With not even a pane of glass in between, the wind, the sound of the water, the smell of rock and greenery all reach you as they are. It feels less like riding a vehicle than like being carried along through the gorge's own air. Enter a tunnel and the sound closes in, a damp chill wrapping around you; break out and the light and wind return. Through that repetition, it is your body that comes to learn how deep the valley is.
The River Changes Color Every Time You Look Down
Leaving Unazuki, the train climbs along the Kurobe River into a deep V-shaped gorge. Each time it crosses a bridge, the surface of the river appears far below. Near the dam lakes it sinks into deep green; over fast shallows it shatters white; in sunlit pools it turns a translucent emerald. It is the same river, yet the color is different every time you look down. The rock walls rear up on both banks, and the deeper into the gorge you go, the narrower the strip of sky above becomes.
It Was Never Built for Sightseeing
The line was laid to carry materials for hydroelectric development on the Kurobe River. To build power stations deep in a gorge that turned people away, a track was cut to haul in supplies and workers — and that track later came to carry sightseers. The small cars and the unhurried pace are the very build of a railway that has worked its way along a severe valley. Enclosed carriages with windows are coupled on as well, but the true calling of this railway is still to ride the open seats and take in the gorge's air along with its views.
The ride back from the terminus, on the very same rails, becomes a different landscape. The rock face that was behind you now stands ahead, and the slanting light shades the valley in the reverse of the way out. Even the chill on your wind-blown face is not the same on the return. You turn around at the end of the line, yet the gorge you carry home is two gorges — one out, one back.