A day of several swings and misses, but still good overall. First, we tried to get souffle pancakes at a cafe, but they only did them for lunch. Like why?! Anyways, Emily boycotted food in retaliation and just had a “large” latte which was certainly not large. The French Toast I got was pretty mediocre, and this would mark one of the few misses for food that we had in the whole trip. We checked out of the hotel (and we got a shout out from the guy at the desk for our compact packing effort, which I was particularly proud of) and got on the subway bound for Tokyo station. Though that dropped us 400 meters from there, so it was a short walk to get where we needed to go.
Dropped the bags in a locker which are plentiful, inexpensive and very easy to use with the SUICA Card. Luckily, because of our bag packing efforts, we were consistently able to fit everything into a single Medium Locker. This saved us tens of dollars over the course of our trip, and we saw more than one person be unable to fit their massive bag into a locker or not have a locker of suitable size available. We saw many others struggle with their bags going up and down the numerous staircases to and from metro stations. I’ll probably do a whole post at the end of this with our packing strategy, as it worked out for several aspects of the trip.
We started walking towards the Imperial Palace Gardens, but realized half way there that they are closed on Mondays! So we changed paths to go to Pokemon Center DX nearby and Jordan spent some of her budget on a very nice (and very reasonably priced) Eevee stuffy. Jordan was properly in her element here and loved looked at everything. The concept of Jordan’s budget probably also deserves its own wrap-up post at the end of this. Then it was back to Tokyo station to navigate our way through the crazy maze of character street, though we did manage to avoid the extra Pokemon store there. Failed at getting food, so ended up with onigiri from the convenience store to stave of the hanger. It was a while before we figured out the proper way to open up the onigiri packages, so these ones came apart a little bit. We luckily avoided making a mess though, so mission accomplished in that regard.
Next was to make our way to the Skinkansen (Bullet Train) area and get our tickets. The computer kiosk didn’t charge us correctly so we had an annoying failure at the entry gate and had to go to the ticket counter. Not sure if we ended up paying the right amount, but it was close to what we were expecting overall, so whatever. Grabbed a few bento boxes (salmon and sides, bbq beef and rice) and got on the Limited Express Shinkansen bound for Kyoto. The Limited Express trains are more expensive, but have fewer stops and therefore hit the highest speeds. Despite the high speeds, it is extremely smooth even when you are pulling into or out of a station. Unfortunately, we didn’t win the seat lottery and were on the wrong side to see the pretty mountains, most notably Mount Fuji. We were able to get a few reasonable views from across the aisle, but it would have been nice to have the good window seat.
The Airbnb in Kyoto is a 4th floor walkup, which is pretty fun. Jordan walks down stairs very slowly (and sometimes stops at the bottom) so it always a struggle to not boot her. This is especially difficult as she always wants to be in front. It is a nice place though, with two bedrooms and a living room with kitchenette. Dining table is on the floor though on a soft tatami mat area. Conveniently, there was also a washing machine that we would use over the course of the next few nights.
We headed out immediately to hit the nearby temple that was closing shortly. We walked around a bit, but they actually closed the good parts earlier than the posted time. So another swing and a miss. Walked around back towards Kyoto station, but even at 5pm, it was a total ghost town! We did finally get the souffle pancakes at a cafe, though, so that was a win. On the way back to the Airbnb, we stopped at the Liquor Museum Bar which is not a museum at all but a whisky and cocktail bar. Jordan enjoyed her (not Tequila) Sunrise, Emily got some sweet blue thing and I got a whisky which was all very good. The guy had so many bottles and I had to content myself with the $14 pour instead of the $40 one. I did sniff that bottle and it smelled amazing, but mine was also very nice.
We picked up snacks and pizzas and ate at our low dining table. A pretty standard deluxe one and then a very non-standard teriyaki chicken pizza with a sauce base of… Mayonnaise. I liked it, but I was the only one who felt that way(the leftovers in the toaster oven actually improved it a bit). We also got some sake at the convenience store, but Emily doesn’t seem to like it much, so I may be getting most of the bottle. I also picked up a tiny bottle of standard-issue whisky, since the selection at the store was terrible. We will have to find a better place to get some actual whisky. All in all, definitely a bit of an odd day, but the weirdest day of travelling beats nearly every day in the office, so I’ll take it.
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