travelling allrite

I calculated some travel statistics for Alex last night. In 4 years of life he has: Taken 42 flights Caught 14 different aircraft types (including subtypes) 11 different airlines (by AOC) Passed through 19 different airports Visited 12 countries (13 if you treat Hong Kong as separate from China) By the end of next month he should have added 9 more flights, 1 more aircraft type, 3 more airlines, 5 more airports and another country (unless you treat Taiwan as China).  My stats at the same age were 2, 1, 1, 2, 1. 

I was looking for shopping centres around Tokyo in Google Maps when I suddenly came across the strangely named Eucalyptus Gaoka station . View Larger Map Eucalyptus and Japan are not something you usually associate with each other, plus it had seemed to have a railway lasso attached to it. It was a bit of a struggle to find out more, but I eventually discovered the Japanese version: Yūkarigaoka , or Eucalyptus Hills, a new housing development. The lasso is a 4.1 km automated people mover  with a koala logo. Photo by RSA from Wikipedia ,  Creative Commons License. Not sure I'm so desperate to catch this "train", but there you go!

I look at a map and spot a railway line. View Larger Map Then I use a station name to try to find the name of the line . No, wait, that stops partway along with grey railway line of the map.What's the end station? Got it . Any connections listed? No. Alright, what's the end station on the map? Keyakidaira. No Wikipedia entry, but look what website the search brought up! Kurobe Gorge tourist railway Pity that it only opens in late April/May. Definitely got to catch it one day. But it all begins with a line on a map.