Japanese railways and its Bullet Trains or Shinkansen are
world famous. But prior to visiting I found the information regarding the Japan
Rail Pass confusing.
The Japan Rail pass is only available to foreigners; it can
only be purchased outside of Japan. It cannot be used on the fastest train –
The Nozomi Shinkansen.
It is also very expensive. It is actually cheaper to fly
between destinations in Japan now, but, as part of our Japanese tour, we wanted
to experience the world famous trains. Luckily
I found this calculator to help me with my decisions
As we were only using the train to do a return to Kyoto I decided
to just book a regular ticket on the fastest train. I then stumbled upon an
offer from JR Tours.
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| JR Flex Ticket |
This was a ticket; again only available to Foreigners, but you
could get it in Japan. This was called The Flex Ticket and suited my plan
exactly.
We arrived at Tokyo main station early- so early the JR Tours office was
not open! When they opened it was quite a long process involving a lot of paperwork to get the tickets. The staff were great and used a small hand held translator devise to talk to us; we saw
this used a lot in Japan and it is very good.
Soon we were on the fastest train service to Kyoto- and got
a good view of Mount Fuji as we sped by it. With the aid of Google maps and using the Kyoto subway system we made
our way to
Koyoto Four Sisters Residence- our home for the next four nights.
Kyoto Four Sisters Residence was so nice. It was an
apartment with a washing machine and the bathroom doubled as a drying room. The
area it was in was great, very traditional and quiet, but with a few restaurants
and supermarkets in walking distance. All in all a fabulous place to stay, I was
pleased with my choice.
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| Kyoto Four Sisters Residence |
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| the apartment at Kyoto Four Sisters Residence |
I had booked an evening walking tour through the Gion district through Viator. The instructions as to where to meet were very poor and didn’t correspond with Google Maps, that took us into the city center-we almost did a walking
tour of Kyoto but just as we were about to give up we found the meeting point.
The tour was just OK, it was very busy; I think the group,
over 60 of us, was too large and struggled to hear the guide. As I had read the
Secrets of a Geisha books I did not learn anything about Geisha, Geiko and
Maiko. It did however give us an introduction to the area and its layout.
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| Kyoto, Japan |
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| Kyoto, Japan |
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| Kyoto, Japan |
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| Kyoto, Japan |
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| Kyoto, Japan |
We had a meal of Ramen in the Gion area with our first taste
of authentic Sake.
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| Kyoto, Japan |
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