Visiting other industrialized countries always makes me envious of their transportation systems. To get to Kyoto, we first took a short walk to the train station where we boarded a standard train to Nagoya, the nearby big city.
The next leg of our journey was a bullet train from Nagoya to Kyoto!
The bullet train, or
shinkansen, goes 300 mph. Juniper did the math and figured out that's 5 miles a minute, or a mile every 12 seconds.
The ride is as smooth as the train looks. At that speed, the rail has to be a continuous piece of track, so there's none of the clackety-clacking that you expect on a train.
On top of that, the train has comfortable seats which spin 180 and adequate leg room, and you can even bring a beer on to the train. This is a lovely way to travel.
The scenery goes by too quickly to admire anything close up, but there were almost always mountains to admire. (I felt very ignorant when I quickly realized that Japan is FULL OF MOUNTAINS. I knew that Japan had some mountains, but I had somehow managed never to absorb the knowledge that there are mountains everywhere.)
Not sure what Hazel just ate...I think maybe she isn't sure either.
After our thoroughly delightful train ride (well, maybe Hazel's snack was less than delightful), we had the pleasure of arriving at the Kyoto train station. We were briefly lost in the bowels of the train station, trying to make our way from the shinkansen arrival platform to the central station, but it was well worth the effort to find it. It's a soaring, open space that includes an epic series of escalators and a rooftop garden with views of both the city and the station interior. This photo is just the top third of the escalator. The full escalator goes from below ground level to well above the skyline. The girls might both put the Amazing Escalator on their top 10 list of fun things they did in Japan.
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