On route to Tokyo
Checked out of our Kyoto hotel with leisure, had a nice chat with our taxi driver on the way to Kyoto Eki. Had some confusion when trying to exhcange our vouchers for rail passes, but eventually figured it out. Managed to get a 2pm shinkansen bullet train from Kyoto to Tokyo, and also schedule our bullet train from Tokyo to the Kansai Airport for Tuesday. 4 days seems like a short time, but Lorraine and I have packed a lot into our trip already, I think we'll be able to accomplish a lot in that time. Got a light lunch at a McDonald's, then parked it in a waiting area for an hour or so. Our tickets were a tiny bit confusing, but there were signs for the shinkansen platforms, and we made it up to ours just fine. We paid more to make sure we had first class seats on the trains, reserved seats and non-smoking. Our seats lean back, there's a light overhead, even a little foot rest; two seats on either side of the aisle, where I think on the ordinary cars there are three, so it's very comfortable. A woman came by and gave us hand wipes, and a man came by to check our tickets. We're making stops every 20 minutes or so to let on/off other passengers.
As we go through the "countryside", you see that it's not really like you'd expect to see back home. The are an unimaginable amount of residential houses out here, I'm sure a good number of single family homes, but they have only the tiniest plot for a "garden", and any large expanse of green is some sort of small farm. I may have seen one park, but that's about it. As we left Kyoto, we did go through a few tunnels to get through the small mountains that surround the city, and like most of the places there must be something about building up the mountainside that people just don't like. It's like they will raise buildings only as far as the ground stays flat, then no one finds it worth their time to make their way up.
We've come up to Nagoya now, and I wish it was worth the effort to take pictures out my window. The weather is overcast and gray, and will probably stay like this for the next few days, but I think things will clear up enough by Sunday sometime. I'm off to go watch either some Hana Yori Dango LA, or perhaps an episode of Mushishi.
As we go through the "countryside", you see that it's not really like you'd expect to see back home. The are an unimaginable amount of residential houses out here, I'm sure a good number of single family homes, but they have only the tiniest plot for a "garden", and any large expanse of green is some sort of small farm. I may have seen one park, but that's about it. As we left Kyoto, we did go through a few tunnels to get through the small mountains that surround the city, and like most of the places there must be something about building up the mountainside that people just don't like. It's like they will raise buildings only as far as the ground stays flat, then no one finds it worth their time to make their way up.
We've come up to Nagoya now, and I wish it was worth the effort to take pictures out my window. The weather is overcast and gray, and will probably stay like this for the next few days, but I think things will clear up enough by Sunday sometime. I'm off to go watch either some Hana Yori Dango LA, or perhaps an episode of Mushishi.