Thursday - January 23, 2020
We wake up ready to travel! I always find that jet lag is much easier to deal with when flying to Asia than anywhere else. It's certainly a lot easier to adapt than when we come home 😭...though that may just be because I'm home and have to put on my grown up pants and go to work.
Since we only had our backpacks (and Raymond's roll-aboard Rimowa) with us, packing was quick and easy. We nipped downstairs to the buffet for breakfast (it was pretty glorious. They even had a VITAMIN buffet - for real - with little tongs and spoons so you can pick which vitamins you wanted to ingest for the day) before hopping onto the free shuttle back to Narita. We hopped off at Terminal 2 because it was the first stop, and made our way down to the basement level to turn in our (super expensive) vouchers for our rail passes. It was just under $300 a person - for four of us, that was really expensive. But buying a round trip ticket on the shinkansen would have cost the same, so wedging in a trip on the Narita Express from Narita to Tokyo before the shinkansen was basically free - saving the four of us around $150. By squeezing in a quick jaunt to Himeji, we were more than getting our money's worth. I had seen photos of Himeji Castle before we left and really wanted to visit. It was further away than Kyoto, but on the same shinkansen line and that morning we weighed our options and decided to just go for it as the rest of our days were already going to be packed. Since we were still fresh, and who knows if we'd ever return to the region again, we decided to just do it! Basically when we're on vacation, a lot of our decisions come down to, "why not?"
It's a good thing we left early, because the line inside the JR Travel Center was pretty long. It took about 20 minutes before we got to the front desk and she quickly booked us seats on the Narita Express train leaving in 8 minutes and booked us seats on the shinkansen headed to Himeji transferring from Shinagawa rather than Tokyo Station becuase Shinagawa was a smaller station that was much easier to navigate with less people. Yay!
Being that our NEX train was leaving in a few minutes, we booked it out of there, flashed our new JR passes at the station attendants and quickly made our way to the platform to meet our train. I wish I took more photos, but it was super clean and looked just like it does online. It was a comfortable hour long ride with very clear announcements in Japanese, English and Chinese for arriving stations along with signboards in the cars letting us know what the next station was.
Shinagawa Station was large, but not nearly as overwhelming as Tokyo Station. We managed to use the restroom and buy some ekiben for the train ride. I mean, it's a rite of passage - EVERYONE brings an ekiben onto the train! I was the last to select because there were so many choices and I didn't know what to get! I wanted everything! There was hot and cold and pastries and sandwiches and sushi and so much stuff my head was spinning!
Once we made our food and beverage selections, we went down to the platform to wait for our train. Raymond had purchased a super fancy coffee for $7 or something - it was like, small batch single sourced and blah blah blah. My dad wanted a coffee, but he about had an aneurysm when he saw the price. But down at the platform, I saw one of a gazillion vending machines - they have SO MANY AWESOME vending machines! And one of them sold coffee - you could buy a can (yes, a can) of HOT coffee for 100 yen (which was just under a dollar). My dad TOTALLY went for that - so while my brother savored some fancy hand picked beans and blah blah blah, my dad sucked down a can of 98 cent coffee 😂.
The train arrived and we boarded - and I was so glad we didn't have our suitcases with us because there are no places at all for suitcases. You could shove small to mid-size suitcases above the seats, but any larger than a 24" suitcase and it would hang precariously over our heads. The seats in standard class (I was too cheap to buy the green class which was an extra $100 per person) are five across, with three on one side and two seats on the other. They weren't roomy seats, but they were fairly comfortable during our trips on the shinkansen. I sat with my parents while Raymond sat across the aisle and next to some guy who rolled in later wearing a suit. Most people seemed to be commuting to work or a business trip because they were all wearing suits. You could tell who the tourists were because we were the sloppy ones!
About halfway into the 4 hour train ride we got hungry and busted out our ekibens. I was the only one who took a photo of my food because I'm a ginormous dork. Who loves taking pictures of food. Ahem.
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| this was glorious - fresh and delicious with soft pillowy rice. I'm drooling as I'm remembering |
And because technology is awesome, we had rented a mobile hotpot from Pupuru that was amazeballs. Unlimited internet that could connect 10 devices at once. All for the princely sum of $100 for 12 days. They even shipped it to Hotel Nikko Narita so it was delivered to me when I checked in - it was already fully charged and ready to go and we were all connected within minutes - really fast speeds throughout the country too. Man, no one does technology like the Asian countries. It also came with a prepaid envelope and I just dropped it in a mailbox at the airport literally before going through security at Narita when I came home - easiest ever!
Anyhoo, because we had the hotspot, we were all connected. We were also just in time to watch my Clippers blow a 20 point lead, something that still pisses me off to this day. Deep breath - serenity now! Then my cousin had to rub my face in it on facebook. It was very no bueno.
Himeji is about another 45 minutes past Kyoto, so we saw the train slowly empty of passengers as we passed Kyoto and zoomed our way to Himeji. We literally had the whole compartment to ourselves!
It was about a 1 kilometer walk to the castle from the train station - and the signs inside the station are super clear, you literally cannot miss it. We stowed our backpacks in a locker in the station and we followed the signs out. Before we left for the castle, we went and reserved our seats for the ride back to Kyoto, giving us approximately 3 hours to walk to the castle, explore, and make our way back for our train.
The castle started as a fortress in 1333, and has been rebuilt and remodeled multiple times. It's also known as the "white egret" castle or the "white heron" castle. Thus all over the city on the way there you can see white birds on all sorts of things.
We could actually see the castle when we exited the station - and it was about a 20-25 minute leisurely walk - we even stopped by a Family Mart so my dad and brother could grab coffees.
It was very atmospheric, and quiet as we were heading in during low season. I bet this place is gorgeous during cherry blossom season, but I loved it anyway. While we were waiting to cross the street the castle there were people trying to sell tours holding signs in English.
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| obligatory family selfie! |
The road up was steep and winding...and it took forever! We had to stop and rest a few times, my butt hurt because there was so much climbing.
Keeping in mind that the current iteration was built many hundreds of years ago, the doorways were also really small! I guess the Japanese were much smaller people then.
Once you enter you have to change into slippers so you don't damage the original wooden floors. We were each given a plastic bag to carry our shoes in for the climb up. And there were so.many.stairs. SO. MANY. STAIRS. And some had very little head clearance, so you had to be super careful navigating these steep ass stairs and not smack your head. Which is not something I've ever had to deal with because standing at a stately 5'2", I've never been in danger of hitting my head on anything because I can't reach anything.
There was no furniture anywhere, but the craftsmanship was visible and incredible.
We finally made it up to the 6th level. After much huffing and puffing. And we had to take a break and rest in the middle of the climb - we found a nook with a bench and collapsed for a few minutes to catch our breaths.
We had to take photos of our victory!
All that was up there was what was a small shrine, but I can't read Japanese, so I don't know who or what it was dedicated to. But the view out the windows was amazing.
It took us awhile to make our way up because the road to the castle itself took so long, so after a few minutes we huff and puffed our way down again.
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| arrowslit in the castle |
We walked back to the train station at a leisurely pace, and made our train with plenty of time. The shinkansen was actually pretty empty on the way back. We alighted at Kyoto Station and I followed the directions the hotel had to reach their shuttle. We could have walked it in under 10 minutes, but it was getting late, we were getting hangry, and why not take a free shuttle?
We booked at the Rhiga Royal Hotel Kyoto, and it was a very nice hotel. Because we were booked for three nights, we opted to book a nicer room just so we'd have room to spread out. We booked a luxury family room (for some reason, we just did not take photos of our rooms this time! So weird!) that had a living area in the middle with 2 twin beds on either side. You walk in, and there's a LONG entry way where we left our suitcases when they arrived. The closet was by the front door too. Then you make a left turn (it was a long L shape) and there was the toilet and a small sink (there was just one random spotlight over the toilet though) and then the large bathroom with 2 sinks, a shower, and another room in it with the tub and a shower area outside of it. This was a very nice and comfortable hotel. There was a 7-Eleven across the street that we found for snacks (walking through what I kept saying was a dodgy alley. It really wasn't dodgy, I just like using the word) and it was an easy walk to the train station. Unlike Tokyo, which never sleeps, Kyoto turns in around dinner time. The only places open past dinner was at the train station, so it was nice that we picked a hotel in that area, and it made transportation super convenient.
The one place I really wanted to eat at was the ramen street inside the Isetan at Kyoto Station. My parents...not into ramen, but Raymond and I LURVE ramen, and they were willing to indulge us. So we walked the 10 minutes to the train station with directions from google maps and took the escalator all the way up to check out the restaurants. We had no idea what the difference was between any of the ramen restaurants, so we found one that appeared to be bustling, but without a long line and put in an order on the machine and then sat in the chairs outside to line up for a table. The machine was easy to navigate since it had English as an option, and it was much easier than I expected.
Raymond and I both ordered spicy and my parents ordered the non-spicy. They also brought a carafe of ice water over to our table and I ordered an orange drink. It was not orange juice, it was to orange juice what grape drink is to grape juice. I think this tasted like Tang maybe? Except I haven't had Tang in over 30 years, so I'm not sure. I was thirsty and I chugged it happily, orange drink or not.
After dinner my we walked my parents to the shuttle while Raymond and I wandered through the stores in the train station, then wandered over to a nearby mall to check out Uniqlo in its home country (so much bigger, and so much cheaper!). On the way back I saw a Mr. Donut, and I HAD to have a Mr. Donut. Because Mr. Donut's donuts are made with rice flour - so they have a chewiness like mochi. 😍😍😍😍😍😍 There used to be one on the first floor of our building in Taipei, but they moved away, and I hadn't had Mr. Donut in over 10 years. I literally ran over and started pointing in the display. I wanted ALL the donuts. I ended up with two, and shared with my mom. But I wish we had Mr. Donut at home. Then again, I would probably be 800 pounds if I had easy access to Mr. Donut. So it's probably better that I only have it once every decade or so. 😭
It was a long, long, long day. The next morning our guide from Kyoto Daily Tours was picking us up from our hotel, so we needed to make sure we were well rested since it was going to be a loooong day with much walking.
After Mr. Donut for dessert, we showered and went to bed. I brought my vacation (yes, I have a spare just for vacations) roku with us so we could stream our shows and movies. So I fell asleep to the strains of the Taiwanese news my mom likes to leave on to help her sleep. It was a good day.
