Thursday, July 20, 2006

Tokyo to Kyoto by Bullet

20-7-6

Had another smooth ride on the Shinkansen (bullet train) today. Took the same line as from Osaka to Tokyo, this time jumping off at Kyoto. The ride was about two and a half hours. Apparently the train travels at about 300km per hour. It is much like being on a normal train except much smoother. Only the occassional gentle shudder. Outside the scenery whizzes by very fast - much like if you took normal video from a standard train and sped it up.

On the train we realised that Tokyo could be the longest we have stayed in one spot during the trip - 9 days. There are so many different areas to explore in Tokyo, and because many of these are quite large areas, it was good to return to them twice or three times to become more familiar with the layout. Tokyo surely must be one of the top places in the world to have your senses overloaded. Each of the places we visited within were very individual in character. Narrow streets and alleys with many independent stores, cafes and restaurants make for a far more interesting place to explore than a huge mall in my opinion. In fact I think we have only set foot in one mall in Japan. A far cry from HongKong or Shanghai, where it's difficult to avoid being in them.

Have settled into our accomodation in Kyoto. Relatively spacious room in more of a traditional setout - shoes off, tatami mats, sliding doors etc. No concrete plans for our stay here yet. We are slightly burnt out from our time in Tokyo, so taking it a bit slower in the last 9 days of our trip is part of the plan. At this stage we will be here 4 or 5 days. We will likely make day trips to Nara, and Hiroshima (if not stay one or two nights there). We return to Osaka on the 26th- to the same hostel in the soccer stadium actually, where we will stay until we head to Kansai airport for our final flight home on the 29th.

2 Comments:

At 7:29 PM, July 21, 2006, Blogger Tere said...

The temperature has dropped since a few days ago here. It had been raining pretty much solidly for 3 days in Tokyo, and first day in Kyoto and the temperature went down to about mid twenties. We've had pretty consistant mid 30s temperatures for almost 3 months now, so the drop was noticable. Wellington should be interesting!

 
At 5:20 AM, July 25, 2006, Blogger El Oso said...

Yeah... Interesting as in cold!! July has been nothing but rain with the exception of that last few days.

I can't believe you're back in a few weeks. Time sure has flown!

Just to give you a bit of perspective on the time you were gone, Mason is now 5 months old

 

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