JAPAN
Japan 2023 Day 20 - Kyoto to Tokyo
Today we had to check out of the ryokan and leave Kyoto :(. Before we left we had the ryokan breakfast which was just as intense as the day before’s. So much tofu for breakfast!
It was tough because this was our friend’s favorite city and we had a really lovely stay. But on the plus side we got to ride the shinkansen for the first time this trip.
I can say a lot of things about how Japan has public utilities figured out and transit is certainly one of them. The distance from Kyoto to Tokyo is about 280 miles which would be somewhere between 5-6 hours by car.
By bullet train we traveled at 140 mph to arrive in Tokyo in something like 3 hours. There’s no TSA, no waiting around at an airport, you just get on the train. There’s wifi and big windows to admire the view of Japanese countryside going by.
The other benefit is that we can get on the shinkansen with our JR passes which is a big money savings. This also gave us flexibility since we didn’t have to purchase a ticket for a specific train time. Our friends didn’t get a JR pass so we still had to wait for them though.
On the train you can order some drinks and snacks but make sure to get food at the train station before you embark. I only ate a curry bread and had a coffee at the station so I got pretty hungry.
Once in Tokyo we took public transit to the Asakusa neighborhood where we were staying at the &And Hostel. Since it’s a hostel we were pretty cramped – probably our smallest rooms in Japan yet. But besides that I thought the facilities were actually fine, everything was clean and functional. Except with our two big suitcases we couldn’t open both the door to the room and the door to the bathroom at the same time!
There wasn’t much to settle into so Justin and I headed out to get some food and caffeine. There’s a nearby Scandinavian café called Fuglen that we went to. I got an iced sparkling lemonade and a super fun waffle with berries, sweet cream and brown cheese! It was just the energy boost we needed to do a little walking around the neighborhood.
Senso-ji Temple is a primary feature of the Asakusa neighborhood and was a short walk away. There’s a ton of food and souvenir stalls along the way, something we’ve gotten used to seeing around all major Japanese monuments.
It’s pretty nice there, you can go inside the temple and they have some gardens nearby.
We walked back to the hotel to meet our friends for our Valentine’s day dinner. They made a reservation at Satsuki and then got a massage while we had been exploring.
The one downside of Satsuki is that it’s smoking allowed. Something we’re definitely not used to in the US. None of like the smell of cigarette smoke but the nice thing is there’s huge vents over each table to suck up the smoke from the grills so it’s not terrible.
We ordered a few plates of the premium meat cuts and had some umeshu sodas. It was a great dinner and our waiter was awesome. Somehow every time we dropped chopsticks on the ground or discovered our scissors were broken he appeared right on time to help out. Also a nice bonus is they gave us little mochi ice creams for dessert with the check!
Now full and meat-sweaty we headed back to the hotel to crash.