Japan Diaries [Day 9]

Day 9 [October 4th]

* I am very glad for packing last night, as we almost run out of time for anything before our hotel check-out from Tokyo. All goes well, the only extra charge we have is a single local call we made to confirm our Mount Fuji tour earlier in the trip (30Y, lol). The 1km walk to the train station is long, hot and laden with heavy bags, but I’m trying to savour the sights and knowing it may be a long time before I’m back here again.

* Fairly easy to buy tickets for and board the shinkansen (bullet train – speeds up to 270km/h… whee!) at 12pm. We take food on board (as do most people) and eat our lunch while travelling. The scenery alternates between city scapes, mountains, industry and suburbia while taking the 2hr trip towards the city of Kyoto.

* We each have a large suitcase in front of our knees, and unfortunately both people in front of us recline their seats back, leaving us with even less room. Seriously, was worse than being crammed on a plane!

* My initial thoughts on Kyoto? Very small, architecture is old and a complete 360 degrees on neon-fixated, over-stimulated Tokyo. Disappointed, I resign myself to an almost boring three days here! Luckily Matt takes us on a walk around the centre of Kyoto (he picks up on how Tokyo-deprived I’m already feeling), and I soon find out about its charm and strange places of its own. Suddenly, things don’t look so grim (homesickness was starting to kick in too).

* While Tokyo’s transport system consists of a series of train/subway lines, Kyoto has a combination of train and bus networks. While JR still exists, most of the trains are local (privatised lines) and aren’t covered by our Suica (prepaid) cards we still have some credit on in Tokyo. It’s a little bit more complicated to work it all out, but we fluke it in the end. As for the bus network? It’s a bit daunting, we’ll get to that when the time comes (tomorrow, lol). P.S. – climbing six flights of stairs up from the subway with 20kg+ bags each = not fun! Escalators seem to go DOWN but not many go UP. Ugh :/

* We find our hotel easily enough (only 3 small blocks from Shijo station, on the Karasuma line) and the staff seem nice, even understanding most of my English – a good sign! The room in small (compared even to Tokyo) but with a BIG bed! Much excitement, as Tokyo’s wasn’t all that comfortable., Pillows a little flat but ‘sleepable’. Bathroom is CRAZY small!! Barely bigger than a caravan’s space, and lots of head-hitting and butt-sweeping goes on in there (when sitting on the toilet, my knees touch the wall on the other side – that’s how small the bathroom is!). But we don’t plan on spending too much time in our time while here in Kyoto anyway. :)

* Kyoto has 1.5 million people, as opposed to Tokyo’s 20 million. We definitely notice the difference, the streets aren’t as squishy, which is a nice change. There are two giant covered arcades of shops in downtown Kyoto (which are lively in both daytime and evening). Shops close at around 7-8pm, perfect timing! We meander around and have dinner in (what we later discover in our Lonely Planet book) a respected soba (buckwheat noodle) restaurant. Very yummy, although bit of a language barrier there. We eat variations of dinner bento (containing both hot and cold foods), containing twists on soba – like pretend sushi with noodles instead of rice, these looked and tasted great! :D

* Find an awesome anime store called ‘Super Position’, which advertises itself as a capsule store. Remember those ball capsule figurines that you get from machines aplenty in Tokyo? Well, this store has opened them all up and are selling the figures in clear packaging, prices going on availability and popularity (ie, rarer/older = more $$$). I like the concept of this store and go nuts finding rare figures I’ve never seen before! Vow to come back tomorrow, as we’re both tired from travelling (and the humidity in Kyoto is different again to Tokyo, so more acclimatisation required!)