Himeji and Kobe
Today too had three parts. Okay, two main destinations outside of Kyoto and the third one was the 100 Yen Shop, that gets an honorary mention because it took us 45 minutes to get there from the train by foot. I shall start at the beginning....
No lazying it out today. By 8:22 in the morning we were on the train bound for Himeji. The sole attraction there is the Himeji Castle. Conveniently enough, the castle is located 15 minutes in a straight line from the train station (actually, one of the castle moats is supposed to right near there). The castle belong to the lords of the land and its main use was (surprise, surprise) for defense. Nothing new here, except that this Japanese castle from about 500 years ago is (according to the books) the prettiest of them all. And it was. I do like traditional Japanese architecture. We managed to climb all the way to the top (5 stories high), saw the shrine there and the view of the city. We were able to go through the West Bailey and some of the grounds.
The next stop (40 minute train ride away) was Kobe. A town (or even city, I don't really know) that was devastated by an earthquake in 1995. Now from what we saw, the city is completely rebuilt and no evidence of the destruction. Nothing much to see as tourists, but it is a nice town if you are local (shopping and entertainment). We went to the city's harbor and in some of the shopping streets. We had a nice lunch and that's about it. The cable car that would have taken us up the mountain was closed today. We managed to see a waterfall that was close to the train station while we waited for the train back to Kyoto.
In Kyoto we went back to the mall strip and went again to the 100 Yen Shop. We bought some more trinkets to bring with us. Now I am more or less happy with what we got and now we can safely come back home...
Some words about the Shinkasen, the superexpress. This bullet train is a pleasure to ride. This one (unlike, say, the trains in Singapore) has seats - we are even reserving the seats beforehand. The train comes right on time to the station, we find the seats (you can even push them back), take a nap, and voila, right on time, we arrive at the destination. That's one kind of train I don't mind riding on long journeys.