Before departing Osaka, we indulged in breakfast at the hotel which brought us back to our travels in China and their incredible hotel breakfast buffets. This one has 3 huge stations-1. breads, pastries, fruit, salad, cheese and drinks 2. Eggs to order, cereals, sausages, gyoza, rice, takoyaki and soup 3. Japanese breakfast offerings. Everything was beautifully presented.
We had a nice walk to the subway station headed to the Shin Osaka station where we would catch the Shinkansen to Kyoto. We stood in line for a half an hour at a large ticket area marked Shinkansen and JR Rail tickets- seemed pretty self explanatory to us. I was feeling quite efficient that we could purchase tickets and at the same time pick up our online tickets for our future travel routes. The girl informed us we could do neither and we couldn’t understand why but oh well. She pointed out the ticket office across the way that looked just like hers. But then we spotted a “tickets for foreign visitors” office! We got all accomplished in 10 min.!
Then on to the Shinkansen, such a sleek, smooth and fast ride, taking only 15 min to Kyoto.
We passed small plots of farms and tall hills on both sides. The scenery is so much more green and approaching Kyoto, the buildings lower and less dense than Osaka. There is more of a calmer ambience, even in the subway stations which are considerably less crowded. As in Osaka, the subway corridors underground connect to an underground “city” of shops and restaurants. Our hotel, the Okinawa Kyoto is right next to the main corridor. As we traverse these subway corridors, I am reminded that we luckily traveled light. Elevators are few and far between, and one sign pointing up led to 3 continuous flights of stairs, from the bottom looking like a small mountain!
It is a rainy afternoon so we do some sightseeing planning trying to maximize our efficiency in seeing as many sights as we can. It’s actually nice not walking today. We ate in the basement level of the train station.