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It was our last day in Tokyo, we have had a great time and feel we have only explored a fraction of what is on offer. There have been many highlights and it is going to be a memorable city for us.
The challenge of the today was to get the Shinkansen (the Bullet train as we know it) down to the former capital and cultural Mecca of Japan, Kyoto. We arrived at Tokyo station in plenty of time as we were a little bit concerned that we may not have booked the train ticket correctly especially after our first experience from the airport. However the station staff stamped our ticket and let's us through to the Shinkansen station. The transportation in Japan is one of the best we have traveled on. As we waited at the area for carriage 8 we watched as the cleaning teams (4 people per carriage) all dressed in a smart uniforms lined up, ready to boards the train. The train drivers were waiting at the front, dressed in smart airline type uniforms complete with hat and leather bag.
The train pulled up on time as usual here and we realised that carriage 8 was a "Green Car" , which is the equivalent of 1st class. Unbeknown to us ,as we were unable to read the Japanese ticket, we had booked seats in 1st class for the same price as the standard tickets. We had booked the tickets at an agent at Tokyo station rather than official tickets which must explain why. The Green car was definetly a service we could get used to, though we were the only tourists in it so I don't think the locals were best pleased with our presence. We had a huge window to look out of and two massive chairs with a good metre to stretch our legs out. Plus a foot rest for shoes and a carpeted side for bare feet. Might not sound much to anyone reading but after being on the Sri Lankan trains it was pure bliss!
The train is smooth and quiet as it travels up to 170mph through the Japanese cities and farm land, with the ocean on our left and mountains on our right. We even glimpsed a view of My Fuji as we passed! It was a fantastic train ride, made even better with our green car status.
After such an amazing ride we felt invincible, having travelled on first class, so we headed confidently out of the station to our hostel. All that happiness and excitement was crushed after 5 minutes into our walk to the hostel, it should have taken us 15 minuets to get there following the main road, it took us 90 minutes to find it with backpacks on and a lack of been able to speak Japanese it was struggle. We walked past it 3 times before realising that the hostel was on the road we'd walked through. Typical! Though at least we saw a bit of the city in preparation.
After all that walking we were feeling pretty grumpy and sleepy so we couldn't be bothered to scan the busy streets to find a restaurant with a veggie option so we wussed out and opted for an Italian. The food looked okay and we were interested to see how the Japanese do Italian. We should have guessed there would be a downside. The food was seriously cheap, the restaurant looked like an American buffet and there were free refills on the drink options. But our tired grumpy brains had no time to think about that, out came our surprisingly nice food in what can only be described as a child size portion! Seriously, an English child would be kicking up a fuss if they saw the size of Matts pizza! We didn't even want to imagine what the helpless children had to eat here. Matt had to grab some cookies to eat that evening in our room as he was still hungry.
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