Breakfast in Kyoto – delicious!

Packed up and waited for a taxi to take us down the mountain to Kyoto station. There was a bit of confusion and the taxi took a lot longer than we had hoped to arrive. We wanted to get one last coffee in Kyoto before boarding the Shinkansen to Tokyo.

It finally arrived – we caught the taxi to Hanazono station, where we then caught the train to Kyoto station. At Kyoto station when had just over an hour until our train. So we raced to a nearby cafe that the internet said was good “best coffee of our trip!” “Excellent coffee” “Nice staff” were some of the accolades it had received. We don’t generally believe things we read on the internet but the photos looked good. It was busy when we got there but we managed to squeeze in and ordered 2 iced coffees (on account of being hot from our mad dash from the station) and guess what ? They WERE great coffees. And it was (one of) the best coffees of our trip. Worth the trek.

Back at the station, we picked up some last minute snacks for the train (we decided to have lunch proper in Tokyo) and waited for the Shinkansen.

Some snacks we had on our journey included a Shinkansen bento (yes it was intended to be a children’s meal, but we are all children at heart aren’t we? ) and a deluxe Strawberry Shortcake.

Sometime after this I fell asleep for a while. Now, I challenge any of you to catch a Shinkansen for any amount of time and not fall asleep. It doesn’t matter if it’s a 30 minute trip or a 3 hour trip. Even if you have had the strongest coffee ever the Shinkansen sleep fairy will come for you. You will be happily gazing out the window and then BAM! The next thing you know you are being woken by a little melody and the familiar train voice saying “Mamunaku…” and all you can think is “just leave me alone and let me sleep” and you consider buying the longest Shinkansen trip you can just so you can sleep the whole time. Or how you can somehow market this to insomniacs…ok I’m going on here now, but there is no sleep as good as Shinkansen sleep.

Once awake again I started to look for Mt Fuji. It was cloudy out there so I didn’t like my chances. Then I got distracted and at the last minute I noticed the sign on the train saying we were going past Fuji station and I looked out the window and there was Fuji San!

It was visible for all of about 10 seconds before disappearing again. So mysterious.

We got in to Tokyo station and lordy was it busy. It was Sunday and everyone was just losing their minds buying crap. We wanted ramen for lunch and it was so busy everywhere we nearly gave up but all the coin lockers were full so we couldn’t store our luggage (and thus go too far) so we found ramen street and chose a place that wasn’t TOO busy. It was Tonkotsu ramen and it was pretty good, but not amazing.

We got in to the buying frenzy a little too (well I did) and then got incredibly lost in the underground maze that is Tokyo station trying to find our subway station to take us to Narita (City, not airport)

We eventually found it and an hour or so later we made it to Narita – our final stay for this trip to Japan. Unfortunately it was already dark and most things were closed by the time we got there.

We checked it to our hotel – Walamatsu Honten and it was better than we remembered. We stayed here in 2019 and it seems it’s been updated a bit and our room was super spacious and awesome.

We went out walking and to find some dinner. It felt like it was about 10pm but it was only like 7pm at the latest. We walked around the temple complex and saw lots of cats. Also some guys being shown around by a Japanese guy who was translating interesting “facts” on google translate. Except they weren’t interesting at all “When I looked through the glass before I saw something gold” that kind of thing, very random and we couldn’t lose them, they kept being wherever we were.

We walked around the temple complex for quite a while before heading off to find dinner. Narita was a bigger town than we remembered and there was a festival on in a nearby town so there were a lot of people wandering around who had had quite a bit to drink.

We weren’t really all that hungry after eating all the food today – we opted for pizza and it was tasty!

Then ice cream from Lawson. This is my new favourite ice cream.

Then back to hotel to have a bath and pack to get ready to leave tomorrow.