The Rolling Stone

Yesterday we said farewell to Kyoto. We had a fairly leisurely start to catch our 11:30 bullet train. Packing up, breakfast at the hotel, and then checking out and taxi to the station.

Complications along the way (such as Xavi leaving his bag in the hotel room – fortunately he realised before we left the hotel) were vastly simplified by Hayley’s increasing Japanese fluency. Hayley studied Japanese through high school and to second year at university, so she was able to hold conversations in Japanese, but has been out of practice. She has quickly picked the skill back up and can now communicate concepts such as “my son has left his bag in the room”. Extremely helpful.

It was raining quite heavily in the morning, which reminded us of what good luck with the weather we’ve been having. This was the first day of rain we’d had. A good day to be in transit.

We arrived at the station about 40 minutes early and found that the bullet trains were running 25 minutes late. This is apparently very unusual and it was interesting to see how quickly they recovered time. The train leaving as we arrived was 25 minutes late, but the trains got progressively less delayed and ours was only about 5 minutes late.

The bullet train has a good view of Mount Fuji as it passes south of the mountain. Sadly it’s peak was once again covered by clouds and only its distinctive long slope identified it.

It was raining in Tokyo when we arrived and after a long queue for a taxi (thankfully under cover) we got back to our hotel where we’d stayed previously.

The room looks almost exactly the same but it’s on the fifth floor rather than the tenth, which means that when we opened the curtains every single window looks out onto the wall of a neighbouring building. It’s amusing, but I think we’re all glad we had the tenth floor for our longer stay in Tokyo.

We had planned to go to the Fire Museum (detailing the history of firefighting in Japan), but by the time we got settled in to our new room it was getting late. So we’ve made plans to go tomorrow morning and so it was a quiet day. Dinner in a local restaurant that Felix picked and then bed.