Shinkansen to Kyoto

This morning we woke up early at our hostel and walked Ben down to the train station so that he could head back to Tokyo to catch his flight.  He left without any problems and should be on the plane now about 3 hours in to a long flight home.  It was a much nicer morning weather-wise and we were able to see Mt. Fuji clearly and Dan got some nice pictures before we left.  At around 10am, we headed down to the train station again and took a bus to Mishima station where we could then board our bullet train (shinkansen) to Kyoto.  While we were waiting on the track, some other trains went whooshing by and, man, they really are fast.  Once we boarded ours and took off, it was surprisingly smooth, and the seats were nice and big and roomy, much bigger than an airplane.  The trip took about two hours and we stopped in about five different cities along the way.  It was cool to see the Japanese suburbs and country side from my window.  I saw a kids’ soccer game and even some rice paddies along the way.

When we got to Kyoto, we got on the (much smaller) subway two stops to our hotel.  We had a little trouble finding it, but once we did, we were impressed with how nice it is and how good the location is.  After settling in, we went out to find a place to eat.  But right when we stepped out of our hotel, we saw some sort of celebratory ceremony going on in front of what looked like a small Shinto shrine.  I caught part of the drummers on video (click the link below).

Drummers

After watching for awhile, we remembered that we needed to eat.  In my travel book, I found a vegetarian restaurant that I wanted to try and we had a little trouble finding this too, but once we did, it was so worth it.  I got a set meal with two courses of vegetables, fried tofu, fried wheat gluten, and mushroom rice soup with yuba noodles.  Each item was oishii (delicious)!  Dan shared most of these with me and also got a side of brown rice cakes, which he said were also very good.  The restaurant turned out to be in this area called Teramachi and Shinkyogoku, which has all sorts of trendy shops and boutiques including a bunch of Japanese hip hop stores (weird), thrift shops with tons of old American t-shirts (and check out the shot Dan got of a whole rack of scrunchies!), and a few arcades thrown in for good measure.  It sort of turned out to be a maze of shops and Dan and I almost thought we were lost before we found the main road again (and a Baskin Robbins!).  Now, we are back at our hotel for the night gearing up for day 1 of sightseeing in Kyoto.  Dan should be posting pictures from today very soon, so check out the Piictures tab!