Catching Up

It’s been a few days  since I’ve posted because we have been so busy  every day and tired every night.  A quick visit to Yokosuka, then we welcomed the arrival of Cindy and her best friend Amy. 

 

They have completely changed the dynamic of our group! Both are bright, highly competent world travelers, adventurous, and natural leaders . They are proving to be such a blessing because they stride out, find things like train ticket machines that save me standing in a long line, taxis large enough to hold four of us and all our luggage, a hidden elevator when the only escalator goes down and  you need to go up, and our chosen restaurant for Brian’s birthday lunch that was tucked away among a lot of other eating places.  And that doesn’t even count the number of times they grabbed my luggage so I didn’t have to lug it up a stair case. 

 

 

After I finally finished dragging everybody down memory lane in the Kamakura area, we turned in our rental car — brilliantly driven by Brian — and walked (with all our luggage) to the train station in Fujisawa.  It was just the four of us as Phil and Carolyn had gone on before. We were headed back to Tokyo to catch the bullet train to Kyoto.  Our first experience using the trains wouldn’t have gone so well without help from several people; such as the man who showed Cindy and Amy how to use the ticket machine and the lady on the street who stepped up when she saw us standing on the sidewalk, looking at a lot of staircases that led to the station entrance. Without her kindness we would never have thought to go into a department store to take their elevator to the right level.   

We have found that language has been a bigger problem than we feared and we have been dependent on Brian’s skill with Google Translate. 

With some challenges we succeeded in getting back to Tokyo  Station. That place is huge, congested, and confusing.  For example, Phil and Carolyn were scheduled on the  bullet train leaving less than an hour ahead of us. We all arrived at Tokyo Station a couple of hours ahead of time, established text contact, but never found each other. Me: where are you? Carolyn: in the waiting room.  Me: so are we but I don’t see you.  No telling how many bullet train waiting rooms there are. We were both leaving from the same track in the same  designated car just over half an hour apart and yet I couldn’t find them when I searched the track. 

The bullet train really does go fast, is relaxing, and there are interesting things to see  between Tokyo and Kyoto.

I can’t talk about Kyoto without first mentioning our hotel. By pure chance when we were looking for a hotel here, at the same time, both Phil and I came up with the Kanra Kyoto. From the website, it looked ok, but nothing prepared us for the magic of our rooms. Unlike any hotel I have ever seen, our hall door is behind a bamboo enclosure with a lantern and small garden. The room itself is in a Japanese style with a living room that has tatami floors, shoji window slides, and a low table.  The bathroom is also typically Japanese with an ofuro - a deep hot tub - and the separate shower and floor drain where you get clean before relaxing in the ofuro. This  room is the loveliest and most unique hotel room we have ever had - for only $138 a night.

 

We started our first day in Kyoto with a trip to the suburb of Arashiyama to visit a monkey park, a temple,  and walk through a bamboo forest. The monkey park was on top of a high hill that required a very, very  long and steep climb with stairs and steep paths. Everyone but me made it to the top, but at halfway, I rested on a bench where I looked up, saw the climb still ahead and thought, “why?”  The tour continued with a long walk thru a Buddhist Temple and garden, and finished with the bamboo forest. We ended the tour at the Kyoto Tower and after Brian’s lunch walked back to the hotel. I’m not sure what anyone else did next. I was just too tired to care. 

Today will be our last day in Japan, and we plan to spend it exploring the old historic neighborhoods of Kyoto looking for interesting shops and photo ops.