Kyoto Day One - March 19th

I walked a lot today, as is testified by the pictures. Before arriving in Kyoto I maybe walked 4 blocks. After I got packed up in the morning I headed to Shiori station and went to Yokosuka Chuo to get Starbucks. After reading up on Kyoto in my Lonely Planet Guidebook I headed back to Yokosuka Chuo. Bryan had left work at 930 and the train was leaving at 952. He arrived at the station out of breath at 948. It takes a little longer than 15 minutes to walk from work to the station. He realized this and ran most of the way. As that was the biggest thing that happened today, it was a pretty good day.

We road the Limited Express to Yokohama and transferred to the JR Yokohama line and road it 3 stops to Shin-Yokohama. It is a much smaller station than I had thought, it just services Shinkansen, Subway, and JR Yokohama line. As we got to the gate we got the tickets out. We inserted them and they came back out with an alarming chime and the wicket gate shutting. After observing a few people go through you needed to use your Suica/Pasmo to get through the gate. After we got on the platform we got ready for the "Bullet Train" which arrived and we had barely gotten to our seats when that train started rolling.

Overall the train ride was extremely smooth. The only times where it got a little turbulent was when the train would pass through a tunnel at the same time another train was going the other way. Fluid dynamics always works. The train was a 300 Series Shinkansen capable of speeds of around 170 MPH. To get the 16 cars moving that fast it takes 25 kV at 60 Hz. The train also stops quickly, without passing scenery you would not know that you were going that fast. It took 2 hours 20 minutes to get from Shin-Yokohama to Kyoto. There were 5 stops along the way. A guy came through the train checking tickets, I was hoping for a "No Ticket" moment but everyone was good on that account.

After we got to Kyoto station we set out to find the hotel which took us around 20 minutes. As we now know it takes 4 minutes to walk from the other side of the station to the hotel. Check-in was 15 minutes after we arrived, so we headed out to get something to eat. We ended up in a mall on the North side of the station. And found a Ramen place that was excellent. We both went with Gyoza sets, I got the soy sauce ramen and Bryan went with the Miso variety.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel and got into the room. The hotel is very nice and has a good location near Kyoto station. If you are going to visit Kyoto the New Miyako is not a bad place to be. We headed out to the visitors center in the station, and got Maps for the bus system and Kyoto. Kyoto has a light festival right now so we also received a map for that.

The next stop was going to Kyoto Tower to get our bearings set. It was 770 Yen to go to the top. The one thing that sticks out to me about Kyoto is how low all the buildings are. The roads are wider and there are a lot more bikes on the road. I got some nice shots from the Tower and then headed to the Starbucks that is in the ground floor of the same building. We then decided on a plan to head North and go up to an Arcade and then hit an Irish Pub for dinner.

On the way up we stopped at a large temple just north of Kyoto tower. The grounds were very large and they had coy swimming around in the exterior moat. One thing I have noticed is that there are pidgins at every temple. The birds know where the food is so it is not surprising. After the temple we found the Kyoto Starbucks Concept store and another temple. It was then time to try out the local public transportation. We found out that for the subway system in Kyoto Suica/Pasmo are not accepted, so we got to buy a ticket.

The arcade was really cool and had many interesting shops. My favorite was an wood block print store, that had a lot of traditional Japanese artwork created using the old method. After walking through two more Arcades it was dinner time. The staff was in the process of taking down all of the Saint Patricks day decorations, seems a little late to me. I went with Bangers and Mash for dinner, Bryn had an Irish Stew. Both were excellent.

After dinner with crossed the river and headed up to the light festival and almost ran into many Japanese people carrying tripods and cameras. It was extremely busy, this coming Monday is a Japanese national holiday to celebrate the spring equinox. It also signals the start of Japanese spring break. It was refreshing to walk around and see non-Japanese people who were not speaking English. In Tokyo almost everyone you see who is Western is speaking Ego-Ga. About a third of the way through the path I noticed that I was down to 1 bar on my camera so I had to ration out the pictures. Tomorrow I will have my spare battery on hand and charged up.

We headed back to the hotel and transferred at one station to a JR line. Bryan found out the Pasmo does not work for JR West trains. At 2320 you can still hear the trains going strong at the station, but they will soon quit. Time to recharge for another day.

Kyoto Day 1 - March 19th