Sunday, October 20th - Monday, October 21st - Days 40 and 41 - Travel to Kyoto and First day
Before we left Haneda airport, we had booked our seats on the Shinkansen (a.k.a. "bullet") train between Tokyo and Kyoto. The very helpful young woman at the Tourist information agency did this for us - and ensured that we would have seats on the side of the car facing Mount Fuji going each way. Our ticket was for the 1:03 Shinkansen (ultimate destination Osaka) - the 500+ kilometer trip would take just over two hours,
Checkout time at the hotel was 11am so we ate a leisurely breakfast at the "Hearth" - the hotel's restaurant on the ground floor. We checked out at 11 on the nose and requested an Uber Luxury Van to pick us up - our experience with trying to shoe-horn large luggage into small cars in the past hasn't been a good one! The guy arrived in about 10 minutes in a gorgeous and luxurious black Toyota van/limousine. He handled the bags and drove us through the relatively quiet streets of Tokyo for about a half hour, depositing us at Tokyo Station. The ride cost about $60 (less Munroe's $15 Uber credit from American Express). A bargain since it saved us trying to find elevators in several subway stations!
Tokyo Station was a madhouse. People streaming everywhere. Families with lots of bags clogging up spaces. Everyone seemed to know where they were going except us. However, we found a corner to get organized in - and suddenly it all looked very manageable. We followed the signs to the Shinkansen tracks, found our train on the electronic schedule and noted its platform. We followed the signs to the platform and there we were - we even moved to the place on the platform where our car - a 'first class' green car - would pull up. We had about 45 minutes to spare so Munroe went for bento boxes to have for lunch on the train while Deb held our place in line with our bags.
The Shinkansen system is a study of efficiency. The train pulls in about 1/2 an hour before our scheduled departure and disgorges its occupants, and the train is taken out of service temporarily while a cleaning crew comes in, cleans, and turns the seats to face in the other direction. Once they are done, the doors open and people have about 5-10 minutes to board and get seated. In our case, since we didn't book reserved space for our luggage, that involved hefting the heavy cases up onto the overhead space above our seats.
The trip itself was smooth, quiet, and comfortable. You could really sense the speed of the train, but it became deceptively normal after a little bit.
The train is amazing. The seats in our green car were spacious and had nice footrests and a big window. There is limited food/drink service on the train, but we enjoyed the salmon bento boxes that we picked up. Free wifi on the train also. But the main thing you notice is the speed and the lack of noise. The train quickly gathers speed but you don't really notice it until you see things whipping by. It is remarkably stable at speed - not even wavering much when another Shinkansen goes past in the opposite direction. The top speeds advertised are between 160 and 200 mph. Amazing. We made the roughly 500 km distance between Tokyo and Kyoto in about 2 hours and 20 minutes, with 3 short stops en route. So efficient and sensible. We could learn a lot from the Japanese.
Here are a couple of short (about 40-second) videos taken from our train window. It'll give you a sense of the speed and stability/quiet of the train. Amazing technology. To get the videos to play, right-click on the link and then on the YouTube URL that opens up underneath it.
Deb rested a bit while Munroe staked out the neighborhood, and he sensed a potential problem. There are about 12-15 large hotels within a mile of the station and he only noticed a handful of restaurants, some of which were quite small (as in 15-20 seats!). We were lucky to get a table at one of the larger ones nearby and we had a nice dinner of a yakitori sampler (2 skewers of 4 kinds of grilled chicken), some dumplings, pickled cucumber (which we've come to love), and rice. We washed that down with a pitcher of Suntory beer. Delicious - all in, the bill came to just over $40!
We were in bed by about 9:30pm. Unfortunately, Deb had a poor night and woke up to find that her symptoms (head and body ache, congestion, cough, fatigue, etc.) had worsened. Fearing the worst, Munroe set off to find a pharmacy to pick up a couple covid test kits - since we'd managed to forget to pack these. Fortunately, the test was definitively negative, so this is just a cold. Somehow, as bad as the symptoms are, they seem more manageable now.
Deb laid low for the day - a very good call as we have LOTS coming up!! Munroe set off for the Kyoto National Garden and the Imperial Palace (back when the shoguns ran the show, so to speak! - until the 1800s when the Japanese capital moved to Tokyo. It looked like a manageable walk - in the end his Fitbit watch had registered about 20,000 steps by the time he got back (around 4pm).
The garden was pleasant - many wide pedestrian boulevards and a couple of nice shrines. The highlight was the pond at the right of the gardens as Munroe entered. It was tranquil and beautiful.
Kyoto is noted for its Geisha girls - so much so that there are warnings out to would-be photographers not to harrass them for photos when they are seen on the street. Being very careful not to disturb them, Munroe encountered two couples and discretely snapped a couple of photos!
] Kyoto's tower - less impressive than Tokyo's Sky Tree
