Day 10 - Friday, Oct. 25 - Tokyo to Kyoto

Up shortly before 6, a bit before the wake-up call.  When I open the curtains, it’s already light, but raining.  The typhoon we crossed in the plane caught up with me.  Clouds very low.  So the view from my 16th floor window is non-existent.
       Little was unpacked, so little to repack.
       I have my train tickets; they were awaiting me at the front desk at check-in, something I’d forgotten about organizing.
       Downstairs in time for a few helpful hints from the staff before the first shuttle back to Narita Terminal 2.  (Hint #1:  The train is in the basement of the terminal.)  I ask my way many times today, both here and at the Tokyo train station, which is huge, but finally manage to find the ticket counter.
       Armed with that ticket, I have time to buy an esnaque (a word I adopted in Peru, where it means “snack”) at - wait for it -  a 7/11, also conveniently on the basement level.  I take a picture of the toy vending machine for my grandsons and then sit and wait.

     The trains run in either direction on the same rails.  And when the PA says “the doors will close soon”, they close immediately.  The helpful PA is in Japanese, English and Chinese, and clarifies “This train is for (fill in the destination); it is not for Tokyo.”  The trip from the airport into town takes 1½ hrs through amazingly wild green landscapes.  Time agreeably spent chatting with a man from Malaysia who’s brought his two sons here for the rugby World Cup semi-final.  I hope his team - New Zealand - wins.  (I later find out it didn’t; England beat the All Blacks 19–7, breaking New Zealand's 18-match winning streak at World Cups.  But I’m sure the boys were thrilled to be there, with dad.)
       Again asking my way, this time in the Tokyo train station, I find the Shinkansen platform thanks to the “kindness of strangers”, as Blanche said in “A Streetcar Named Desire”.  The train pulls in, empties out, and a cleaning crew jumps to it; they have only ten minutes!  I watch as seats (blocks of two or three mounted on a “beam”) are swivelled 180° so they face the opposite way, something French Rail and Deutsche Bahn don’t do.  No riding backwards here.  This also requires swiveling space, which means lots of legroom.  One woman does the windows, another removes the headrest covers, yet another puts new ones on (and yes, they’re linen, not paper), still another brushes off the seats... then the crew is gone and we board the Nozoma Superexpress to Hiroshima, with two stops, one of which is mine:  Kyoto.

       The Shinkansen is a funny-snouted thing that speeds up fast almost from the get-go, which French Rail and Deutsche Bahn don’t do either, having to travel slowly in built-up areas.  Most of Honshu Island’s south coast is built-up, but with areas of hothouses and fields, plus mountains in the background.  We arrive in Kyoto in 2½ hrs!  And I was right in thinking that Mt. Fuji would be hidden today.  Clouds down to the ground almost.  At least it’s not raining here.
       (An aside:  the stop after Kyoto is announced as I get off the train.  Hiroshima.  My eyes tear up, being this close to that once-doomed city.  It’s always had an effect on me because the first atomic bomb ever was dropped on it on August 6, 1945, and I was born on another August 6th.)
       I forget that I chose the Kyoto Tower Hotel because it’s right by the train station, so I tip the taxi driver well for a ridiculously short ride.  No wonder he looked perplexed when I told him the name of my hotel.  My room is small but has all I need, except a view, but the windows are rice paper anyway and I’ll be away almost all day, so who cares?  It’s quiet and on the 8th floor, which is where the hotel starts in this building.  The lower floors are offices.  Strange.

       I’ll have both meals today in the food court
on the basement level - quite a range to choose from, with a DJ at dinnertime and uniformed school girls at lunch.  As I’ve navigated all those trains today, I get cocky and try the revolving dish restaurant.  Delicious.  And fun.  Tonight I try another place for tempura.
       Between the two meals I get on a first name basis with the travel staff on the third floor.  Tomorrow is all planned out so a tour will take me to see most of the things on my wish list.  Plus they book me a kaiseki meal on Sunday and help with the train-to-the-plane on Monday
       But I get ahead of myself.  First a little laundry-in-the-sink.  Then bed!