As usual, I started off with an early visit to the onsen, before Viki and Henry woke up. We then decided to have the breakfast buffet at the hotel, which was pricey, but great. It included similar items to the buffet we had in Matsumoto at the same hotel chain, but also included unlimited tuna and salmon sashimi. We ate our fill and then headed to Kyoto station to board the bullet train.
I asked Viki how she felt, just waltzing up to the station without having bought a ticket, and rather than spending 7 hours on a highway bus to Tokyo, we’d be blitzing over in 2h15m, reclined in a nice train seat. She said she liked it. We had some trouble finding the JR West ticket office, but eventually found it, refunded the remaining balance on our ICOCA cards, and made seat reservations on the Tokyo bullet train departing 45 minutes from then with seats on the side that would look up at Mt Fuji. We then walked around the station looking at all the food stalls, really well equipped for travelers. There were all sorts of bento boxes, beautifully presented, with nice quality foods, that you could buy at the station and eat while on the train. They also didn’t seem too expensive, around 10k-20k yen.
The bullet train didn’t feel much different than any other train. The seats reclined quite far. Henry cried for a while but eventually fell asleep. Mt Fuji was covered in clouds, so we looked in its direction, but didn’t actually see it. We arrived in Tokyo and checked in to our hotel, another APA hotel, quite budget and caters to business people. I went to the onsen and then took Henry, who had a rice with tuna mayonnaise rice wedge, while Viki napped. THe onsen was quite nice, just missing a cold pool.
Finally, we went out to meet my friend Leanne, a friend from Singapore, who now lives in Toronto, but who happened to be visiting Japan at the same time as us. She first took us for a walk around the Ginza neighbourhood and showed us some sights, since she lived in Tokyo for 6 years. We then went to a shabu shabu restaurant, where we had a hot pot with a mix of beef, duck, pork, and chicken. It was tasty and fun to try a different type of Japanese food that we hadn’t had yet. Viki had some fancy ice cream on the way home.
Now off to bed to get some rest before our flight home tomorrow!
