TRAVEL DAY - from Lake Kawaguchiko to Kyoto - Shinkansen time!

The day of travel from Lake Kawaguchiko to Kyoto was our first ( and maybe only ) experience on a Shinkansen; the famous bullet train of Japan! 

Shinkansen’s have their own train lines and there must better hundreds, if not thousands of Shinkansens zipping around Japan at any given time. While we were waiting on the platform for ours, at least a dozen raced past. They are so fast and so silent. I was trying to record one zoom through the station and every time I glanced way, one would fly through and it would disappear before I even had a chance to get my phone up and recording. 

The girls loved riding on a Shinkansen, especially Hallie! The Bullet Trains are so spacious inside- much more leg room than an aeroplane. 

Howeve, as much as we enjoyed our Shinkansen experience, we may not go on one again. The main reason is so far, we’ve found the highway buses to be very straightforward and much cheaper.  We had to catch a highway bus from Lake Kawaguchiko to a station called Mishima to meet up with the Shinkansen line. That was the second highway bus we took and we really can’t complain about them. They seem like great value for money to us. But I will keep you posted and probably do an overall post about transport towards the end of our trip. 

Once we arrived in Kyoto, we left the main train station in search of another one and I have to say it was the first time we caved in and hailed a taxi. It was very hot and we could see the girls were getting to the end of their tether so we hailed a cab and had it drop us off right at our accommodation. Not the cheapest option but it avoided a potential meltdown. 

I’m writing this after being in Kyoto for 3 days now and I can say that the local trains in Kyoto are nothing like Tokyo with it comes to efficiency. They are are much more challenging to navigate. There is a good chance we all would have had a meltdown if we had tried to catch the local trains to our accommodation from the Shinkansen station on our arrival into Kyoto.

Kyoto has about 6 different train companies all with their own train lines and often a neighbour will have two different train stations for two different train lines and they don’t intersect. So if you want to change to a different train line, you often have to get out and walk to a different train station. It is definitely a difference from the intersecting networks in Tokyo. 

Anyway, that’s just my little rant about Kyoto trains. We do actually see a lot of locals riding bikes, some mums have bikes that have a baby seat on the front and back and they are even semi enclosed in case of rain. Kyoto is really flat and there is a great pathway that runs along the waterway. If you were here with friends or just as a couple, bike riding would be a great option.