Kyoto and Shizuoka

For our birthdays, Mike and I decided that we would go on a trip. So this weekend being a long weekend (4 days off) for me we packed up our bags and went to shizuoka city in shizuoka.

Day 1

We left on Saturday morning at 10am, and caught the train to Hiroshima, from hiroshima, we bought a Shinkansen (or “Bullet Train”) ticket to Kyoto. If you look on a map, you will see that Kyoto is roughly half of the way between Shizuoka City and Hiroshima. I was hoping to stay for a night in Kyoto, but because it’s a very popular season, we couldn’t find a hotel in any part of Kyoto or outlying areas or cities. In Kyoto, we met one of my old students, Shota, whom I taught at uvic for a few months. Shota and I kept in touch after he returned to Japan and it was nice to see him again. Because we only had a few hours in Kyoto before we needed to be back on the Shinaknsen to Shizuoka to make it in time to check in to the hotel, Shota took us to a very famous, but luckily nearby temple. This temple was called Kiyomizu, and has one of the most famous views of Kyoto. We walked for about 15 minutes shoulder to shoulder with other patrons up the temple hill, surrounded by souvenir merchants and vendors. From the top of the hill, you could enter the temple grounds and take in the scenery. Because Saturday was a very hazy day all over Japan, the view wasn’t as spectacular as perhaps it would be on clear day. However, we could certainly see why so many people come to Kyoto in November. In November, the Japanese Maple trees change their colours. Suddenly, Kyoto becomes the Japanese version of Boston in the fall. The maple trees surrounding Kyoto become completely scarlet.

After our visit to the shrine, we headed back to the train station to catch the Shinkansen. When buying a shinkansen ticket, you can choose to buy a reserved ticket, in the reserved sections or, non reserved ticket in the free for all sections. While the reserved seats are a bit more expensive, you won’t be forced to stand on the train, like mike and I did for part of the trip to kyoto. We decided not to buy a reserved ticket though, seeing as though we had enough time to line up to get a seat for our train. Plus, the train we were going to take had 2 extra non reserved sections to sit in. When the Shinkansen arrived we hopped on the train and jumped into the first non reserved seats we found. We found it a bit odd that people who had gotten on the train before us didn’t sit in those seats, but moved on to other ones. After being seated for a moment a fellow came up to us motioning at the seats, and showed us his ticket. His ticket had those seat numbers on them, apologizing greatly we hurriedly found another set of seats. A few minutes later, when the train had left the station, a train attendant came around and checked everyone’s tickets. He checked our tickets just fine, but a moment later took out a pen and paper. He proceeded to point at our tickets, go umm and uhh, for a few moments, and then write a few lines on the paper. I checked the time on my phone, and suddenly it dawned on me what it was all about. The train we were supposed to be on hadn’t even left the station yet. Not only were we sitting in a reserve section; we were on the wrong train! The nice train attendant gave us the information on how to transfer at the next stop onto our correct train, but he also didn’t ask us to move from our seats. The next station was Nagoya. Luckily, the train we were supposed to catch also stopped in Nagoya about 5 minutes later.

Hopping into some seats on the correct train, we pleasantly enjoyed the last of our journey to Shizuoka.

Once arriving in Shizuoka, we made our way out of the station to the nearby hotel where we were staying. That night we ate in the hotel restraunt. The food was alright, though the portions were mostly tapa sized.

Day 2 Shizuoka:

On the second day of our adventure, we got up around 9 am and headed downstairs to our complementary breakfast of a boiled egg, salad, toast and croissant. Not a normal breakfast for either of us, but the change was nice. Afterwards we headed out towards the gundam! We asked the hotel staff what the best way to get there was. They suggested taking the train for about 3 minutes, but at that distance we just decided we would walk it and see some scenery. Although it was ridiculously hot for a day in November (was about 18 in the sun that day) there was a nice cool breeze. I’m glad we walked to the gundam, because on the way, we caught a glimpse of Mt. Fuji! Though without snow.. After about 20 minutes of walking we could see the tip of a gundam head peaking over some of the buildings. The Shizuoka Hobby fair was about two minutes away from the train station in Higashi Shizuoka. The Hobby Fair contained other things than gundams, but it certainly was the main attraction. Inside the Hobby fair were food vendors, a stage where later a juggler performed, a hobby museum, and a giant inflated ship being eaten by a giant orange octopus/kraken that doubled as a children’s slide. (I really wanted to go down this, but I was a bit big...) Inside the Hobby museum there were all sorts of old models, and old model boxes. I took a fair amount of pictures, so I think they can explain themselves. Afterwards, we visited the gift shop, and had our picture taken with the giant gundam as as well as taking our own pictures.

Afterwards we took the train back home and relaxed our tired legs in the hotel room before heading out to find some dinner. That night we decided to try our hand at some ramen. It wasn’t bad, but we both agreed that we much prefer buckwheat noodles called Soba.

Day 3 shopping in Shizuoka

Day three, Monday, which was my birthday, we decided we would go visit the Nihon Daira Zoo, We saw it advertised on a poster at the train station when we were coming back the previous day. Before we headed out to go to the zoo we decided to check the website to see their hours and it turns out they were closed on Mondays. Rain pouring outside, we weren’t really sure what to do with our day after that. Only knowing that we would probably want an umbrella what ever we did we set out to go to the nearby 7/11 to get one. This sort of lead into our walking adventure of Shizuoka city. We found a few malls where Mike bought me some Body Shop lotion for my birthday, we found a Soba restraunt for lunch, and also where I bought a whole bunch of leggings and leg warmers to wear for work. That night we chanced upon a really nice restraunt serving some of the nicest North American style food we’d had since we arrived. Plus, they also had a bread and drink bar, where after paying your fee, could help yourself to fresh bread and non alcoholic drinks. The bread really was fresh, too. Whenever they brought out fresh bread from the kitchen, they would ring a bell and shout the type of bread it was. Also, it was quite reasonably, coming to roughly the same price of our ramen dinner the night before.

During dinner, mike looked across the table to a shop behind me and said, “Hey, that’s a music store. And look, they even have ukuleles.” Before leaving to Japan, I had mentioned to Mike that I was interested in learning to play the ukulele. It’s a bit of a silly instrument but seemed like it would be a lot of fun. I had thought about it some when arriving in Japan, but not seeing any music stores close by, I hadn’t thought too much more about it. After dinner we went over and I chose out a beginners Ukulele and Mike bought it for me as an early Christmas gift.

After dinner, I had a nice hot bath in the hotel room’s tub with my new bubbles and lotions from the Body Shop.

Day 4

After finding out that the zoo was closed yesterday, we decided to delay returning to Kure until the afternoon so we could visit the zoo in the morning.

After having our final complementary breakfast, we headed down to the Shizuoka Station. There, we found a coin locker to put all our bags in and took a train down towards the zoo. We ended up sharing a taxi from the station with another japanese woman who was also going to the zoo. There was a bus that went from the zoo to the station and back, but the next one wasn’t going to leave for another hour.

At the zoo we saw all sorts of animals, some in better condition that others. While entertaining, some of them seemed pretty bored. Such as the hyenas that just walked back and forth in their cages, and the polar bear that did continuous back flips into the water.

It was an enjoyable morning anyways. At around 1:30 we headed off to the station to get onto the Shinkansen and headed home! The trip home was pretty uneventful with us catching the correct trains, hah.

Over all it was a nice trip and we both had a great time.

all the photos can be viewed here in set #1 and set # 2 for those of you on my facebook friend's list.