Shinkansen

It's hard to say whether I had a good nights sleep or not. All I can say is that I did get some sleep, but did wake up earlier than I wanted to.

Once awake I did a bit of Lonely Planet research before going out to get some caffeine and something to eat. I stopped at the Starbucks right by the hotel and picked up a latte (which I drank in the fairly plush store). I then walked to Roppongi. On the way I popped in to an AM/PM convenience store and bought a couple of onigiri (a rice triangle with a tasty filling all wrapped in dried seaweed). It was still raining, but not particularly heavily.

I was back at the hotel by 9am and collected my stuff and checked out.

The next adventure was to negotiate the Tokyo subway system with all my stuff. I wanted to get to Tokyo JR Train Station where I planned to get my Japan rail pass and then take the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. It turned out that it was all pretty straightforward and not much of an adventure! I caught the tail end of rush hour so the subway trains weren't to crowded, the process of collecting the rail pass was simple, as was sorting out which train to get and the platform it was leaving from.

At the moment I'm sat on a Hikari Shinkansen. We've just made a stop at Yokohama and now we're speeding smoothly on the way to Kyoto!

I think the one problem with the Shinkansen seems to be a lack of space to store any bulky/big luggage. My big bag is occupying the seat next to me – fortunately the train doesn't seem too busy.

Time to sit back and watch the Japanese countryside (or urban sprawl) whizz by. Apparently if you sit on the right hand said of the train you can see Mount Fuji somewhere en route. I'm not sure that's likely today since the clouds are very low and it's pretty misty.