Japan 5: Shikansen and Kyoto
Kyoto is much much smaller than Tokyo and it avoided being bombed during World War Two, so there's a lot more older things that survived.
We took the tokaido shikansen from Shinigawa to Kyoto. The shikansen is a high-speed bullet train which comes in three types: Kodama (stops most places), Hikari (limited stop) and Nozomi (express). Despite being one of the fastest trains in the world it still takes about three hours to make the journey. I didn't mind though because I had bought a new Phoenix Wright game the day before.
The Japanese Rail pass for foreigners, valid for seven days IIRC. These things cost a fortune and I was terrified when my got water-damaged in Mitaka. No one really looks at them though, so it was okay.
The view from my hotel room, a lot less epic than Tokyo.
Kyoto tower, it's apparently regarded as an embarrassment and is actually so small you have to go looking for it.
I found Kyoto a lot more "touristy" and somehow less accessible than Tokyo. Most of the restaurants had no English language menus and instead you chose food from a display of dishes preserved in varnish. I did take my mother to a sushi conveyor belt restaurant and tried a large variety of weird things. No horse meat sashimi though (sorry plutospawn, I tried). Traveler's tip: Never try raw quail egg and grated daikon wrapped in nori, it's like eating goo-covered gym-socks.
A sushi lunchbox containing (left to right) crab-meat maki, packet of pink pickled ginger, octopus nigiri, mackerel(?) nigiri, prawn nigiri, salmon nigiri, another prawn nigiri, tuna nigiri and squid nigiri. All entirely raw, except for maybe the prawns. I apologise for the really shitty picture.
Seafood restaurant with a model of a giant Japanese spider crab. I really wanted to go to an aquarium to oogle the giant crabs but had no time, so this was the closest I got to the real thing.
Japanese cinema posters for Ocean's Thirteen and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Right above them was a huge poster for the new Evangelion movie. You can just about see the characters' legs and skirts in this shot.
Kentucky Fried Chicken is pretty popular in Japan. I laughed and laughed at this Colonel Sanders-san thing.
Street of shops leading to Kiyomizu shrine, more of that shrine in a later post.
This phone-pole could seriously fuck you up. Don't make eye-contact.
We took the tokaido shikansen from Shinigawa to Kyoto. The shikansen is a high-speed bullet train which comes in three types: Kodama (stops most places), Hikari (limited stop) and Nozomi (express). Despite being one of the fastest trains in the world it still takes about three hours to make the journey. I didn't mind though because I had bought a new Phoenix Wright game the day before.
The Japanese Rail pass for foreigners, valid for seven days IIRC. These things cost a fortune and I was terrified when my got water-damaged in Mitaka. No one really looks at them though, so it was okay.
The view from my hotel room, a lot less epic than Tokyo.
Kyoto tower, it's apparently regarded as an embarrassment and is actually so small you have to go looking for it.
I found Kyoto a lot more "touristy" and somehow less accessible than Tokyo. Most of the restaurants had no English language menus and instead you chose food from a display of dishes preserved in varnish. I did take my mother to a sushi conveyor belt restaurant and tried a large variety of weird things. No horse meat sashimi though (sorry plutospawn, I tried). Traveler's tip: Never try raw quail egg and grated daikon wrapped in nori, it's like eating goo-covered gym-socks.
A sushi lunchbox containing (left to right) crab-meat maki, packet of pink pickled ginger, octopus nigiri, mackerel(?) nigiri, prawn nigiri, salmon nigiri, another prawn nigiri, tuna nigiri and squid nigiri. All entirely raw, except for maybe the prawns. I apologise for the really shitty picture.
Seafood restaurant with a model of a giant Japanese spider crab. I really wanted to go to an aquarium to oogle the giant crabs but had no time, so this was the closest I got to the real thing.
Japanese cinema posters for Ocean's Thirteen and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Right above them was a huge poster for the new Evangelion movie. You can just about see the characters' legs and skirts in this shot.
Kentucky Fried Chicken is pretty popular in Japan. I laughed and laughed at this Colonel Sanders-san thing.
Street of shops leading to Kiyomizu shrine, more of that shrine in a later post.
This phone-pole could seriously fuck you up. Don't make eye-contact.