So we got through breakfast which was pretty much in the western style (at least the bits we had - there were lots of offerings that were Japanese too) and packed up again, got the shuttle bus back to the airport and headed for the railway station.
We found the Japan Rail ticket office. There seems to be one at every turn. Using our rail passes, we collected tickets to Kyoto on the bullet train. Japanese trains run on time. One of the pieces of literature we had on the railways said "Please be on the platform 10 minutes before the train leaves. Do not worry. The train will leave at the stated time". There is no question that it will be late.
The bullet trains are of the Eurostar variety and are kept in immaculate order and cleanliness. There was never any dirt or rubbish anywhere. We boarded our train for the hours ride to Tokyo where we changed to the Kyoto train and had another 2 and half hour ride. We were able to ring our host and tell him which carriage we were going to be in and he met us at Kyoto station at the door of our train.
The first thing I noticed on the train were the seating arrangements of all the passengers. All seats are booked and the seat number is issued at the time of booking. The seats are arranged aircraft style in a 2-3 arrangement, all facing the direction of travel. (all the seats incidentally, I discovered when I pushed a big pedal underneath, swivel around by 180 deg so that they can be faced the other way for the return journey - quite a big job as there were 20 rows in our carriage and 16 carriages). We were booked into 2 rows of 2, one behind the other. But on this carriage and all the carriages and all the trains we ever traveled on, there were no passengers in the 3 seat side of the train. Everyone was seated on one side and no one (except me) strayed on to the other side. Bit strange.
When you look out the window you notice the closeness of the buildings to the track. Even the bullet train travels past houses with rooms that can be no further than 10 feet from our seat. The amazing thing is that the train seems to travel silently and as we discovered in Japan, almost everything is quiet. Then you notice the miles and miles of single 2 storey dwellings. Mostly they are 2 or 3 room sizes big, upstairs and down. Perhaps 600 square feet in total. They all have washing hanging out from the upstairs balcony as no one has a dryer. They are sometimes 4 feet from their next door neighbour but more often they are 12 to 18 inches apart with no garden but sometimes a little front patio and occasionally an off street parking area suitable for a midget car. You have to prove you have a car parking space here before you are allowed to register ownership of a car. No 2 houses are the same. There are no streets of uniform shape or style and no estates. Because of the danger posed by earthquakes, the utilities are mostly strung from poles in the streets. So all the streets are lined with rows and rows of cables strung from telegraph poles with transformers at every junction. The overall effect is that it looks all very temporary to our eyes, and quite untidy. It really looks very shanty town. Not what you would expect. It is very uniform with no houses particularly bigger than the next or decorated differently but that is what the Japanese are all about - not being different or setting themselves apart in any way. Be the same is the name of the game.
The guard enters each carriage with a bow and checks our tickets. Then he bows again before leaving. The lady with the refreshments trolley enters and exits in the same fashion and she travels up and down her 8 carriages (there is another lady for the back 8 carriages) 3 times per hour. We are being served at every point.
We are met by our host Jerry, who handily has a pick up truck. We were wondering how we might get all our baggage to our final destination. We drove from Kyoto back to his house which is in Ikoma about an hour away from Kyoto by road.
The drive was quite slow. Traffic never seems to go over 70 or 80 kph and every driver seems super polite. The roads are narrow and there are few highways or motorways of note. Was quite strange coming from LA where we often rode 16 lane carriage ways (almost always choked). From what we knew of Japan we were expecting the roads to be completely jammed but I would estimate that very many fewer Japanese had cars, in comparison to europe or the US, and the roads seemed mostly to be only suffering moderate traffic.
I found the statistics: the 10 principal cities in the US have 600 cars per 1,000 of population, the 11 principal cities of europe have 400 cars per 1,000 and Tokyo has 225. You only have to look at the residential streets of London to see the cars parked row upon row.
The annual car inspection (which starts after the car is 3 years old) can cost between £600 and £800 per year. That's why so many second hand Japanese cars are exported.
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