Doai Station - deep underground

Snow Country is home to some pretty unusual tourist attractions. One of the most noteworthy though is its famous station - Doai. All things train related are pretty popular around here, especially the steam engine that comes to Minakami. If you carry further on up the Joetsu Line from Minakami to Echigo-Yuzawa you will soon reach Doai Station. Should you come from the other direction, it is your ordinary JR station, situated at the base of Mount Tanigawa. However, heading north the line actually goes deep under the mountain and that is where you will find the station. Getting off the train you will have to negotiate 462 steps to get back up to the surface.

It's an incredible feat of engineering and plenty of people come to have a look at it. It is fantastically cool in summer but once you walk all the way up or down, it'll soon warm you up.

Stood at the top of the stairs you have a great view down into the depths.

Many keen hikers who are coming up from the capital to tackle Mount Tanigawa (to tick it off their list of the 100 Famous Peaks) have to start their ordeal from the bottom of these stairs - a pretty good way to get warmed up for the hike ahead.

If you don't fancy the climb up the stairs, stay on the train and it will take you out of Gunma prefecture and into Niigata prefecture through the Shimizu Tunnel. This is the tunnel mentioned at the start of Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country with the memorable sentence about the train coming out of the tunnel and the protagonist finding himself in Snow Country.