What do you do when you wake up in the three o'clock hour and can't get back to sleep? Well, I can't speak for everyone, but we decided to take an extraordinarily early run to the combini to grab som nigiri, drinks, and umbrellas because it decided to rain on us.
We knew that we had to catch an early shinkansen (aka Bullet Train) to Kyoto, but we still didn't feel 100% confident in the train system so we decided to just check out of the hotel around 7am and get to Tokyo Station sooner rather than later just in case we completely messed up. Turns out that we're figuring out the trains pretty well, but the train lines aren't always labeled very well and that set us back once we got to Tokyo Station but it worked out.
Traveling to Tokyo Station at 7am is a surreal experience. We were the only obviously non-Japanese on the train at that hour, and it was packed with people going to work. They were almost entirely dressed in black or grey and white and about half of them were taking a snooze. It was so quiet that you could hear people snoring...at least I could hear the guy next to me, anyway. Once we got to Tokyo Station, however, it was CRAZY. I've never seen so many people, dressed mostly the same, going to the same place at the same time, as quickly as possible.
I was really looking forward to the shinkansen. It's just one of those things Americans think of when we think about Japan and I couldn't imagine missing out on it. It's far more comfortable than an airplane and even more smooth, until another train passes from the opposite direction or a huge gust of wind hits ya...and it was pretty windy!
Looking out over the countryside i realized that the Japanese have really perfected urban sprawl. It was almost like one huge city from Tokyo to Nagoya to Kyoto, but you could see green mountains in the distance. Unfortunately it was cloudy so visibility stunk and we couldn't see Mt Fuji 😪
When we finally arrived at our hotel, in the Gion district (Geisha district) we were pleasantly surprised that our room was really good sized with a super cool bathroom set up! Toilet demonstration in the pictures...
We decided that given aching feet and other ailments, it would be best if we rented bicycles so that we would be able to head over to the other side of Kyoto first thing tomorrow and not have to rely on trains or busses. Then we took a stroll down Nineizaka and Sannenzaka and eventually found an udon place that was exactly what we were looking for!
Tomorrow will be another busy day, starting with the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove and Fushimi Inari Gates and then making our way back to the shopping district!
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