Day 2 - Family Japan - "Kyoto and the Railway Museum"

Day 2 (Japan date: December 15, 2018)

I started my day around 5:30AM after giving up at the third time being awake, Terra followed by 6AM and Matt at 6:30AM.  It was a gorgeous sunrise and instantly gave me energy, something felt so right being in that atmosphere. By this time we were hungry and also needed to repack bags in order to make it on our Shinkansen departing from Tokyo Station at 8:03AM, so we decided to check-out and head to the station early. Thinking we would at least stop at a kiosk along the way for food, we walked.  And walked.  And walked.  Until we were at the correct platform at 7:43AM (it took a bit longer than myself and Google thought).  As soon as I was about to leave my bags with Matt and head off to grab food, the train pulled up!  Curse Japan and their commuter systems being consistently on time or early. With so many bags, in we went.  Little did I realize we wouldn't be getting back off for food at all, and this was going to be a solid three hour train ride.  Luckily, within the first 30 minutes, a cart came by with sandwiches, but I was still hungry.  Hopefully food would come quickly once we arrived at Kyoto station.

The Shinkansen was a smooth and easy ride, as I remembered from 2010, I have never taken such a long commute so effortlessly before. Upon arrival in Kyoto Station, to my dismay, we headed straight to the AirBNB instead of stopping for food, it was an obvious choice with so many bags but I was still starving. At least we located the Machiya (traditional townhouse) with little issue and found it to be a solid 10 minute walk from the Kyoto Station platforms, which wasn't too bad. The landlord was still cleaning when we arrived, but assured us we could leave our bags and showed us the basics.  She was very kind and it was another effortless experience.  Having used AirBNB rentals for the majority of our 2010 trip, I didn't even hesitate to do the same this time around. 


Now bag-less and even hungrier we went on the search for food, I had hoped to return to the station and dine at the awesome tofu restaurant (from my memory of 2010). The station was as large as I remembered with over 12 floors of restaurants and shopping in the main complex alone, now decorated for Christmas, it was a site to behold in and of itself. However, we quickly learned Saturdays are very busy days for lunch everywhere, so we opted for the quicker food option this time after seeing the long wait to get in to the tofu restaurant.

Food was found in the way of Kaiten Zushi located within the station, a place called Kanazawa Maimom Sushi Kyoto at Station Porta. It was obviously fresh and the instant food was a great choice, but nothing "to write home about". 
After our bellies were full, we decided to head for Kyoto Railway Museum.  A taxi was our top choice as the trains and buses didn't get us very close and the trip of dropping luggage off at the apartment and then walking back the long way to the train station was already tiring.  We were dropped off at the entrance in about 10 minutes for 1,080 yen... totally worth it. Once inside, I realize comparing it to the railway museum in Baltimore was unfair and that is was much more like the Air and Space Udvar Hazy in Chantilly, based on the sheer amount and size of exhibits.  

They had both a train yard/outdoor area and an expansive indoor area. Arriving at 1:30PM, our only goal for the day was to leave by dinner time since we didn't want to eat there and to also pick up groceries for the coming days (especially non-existent-in-Japan-breakfast). That being said, I feel like we both took our time and didn't have enough time to see everything. You first enter at the outdoor portion where they had several late-model trains to walk into and an outdoor cafe inside one of them (where else?), which we didn't eat at. Thinking back, this outdoor portion might have even been free to the public. The actual entrance was past this in a large 3-story building, once inside we had to purchase tickets (1,200 yen each) and were handed a map and stamp book. The displays had limited English, but most of them were self-explanatory or had enough English to understand what they were. The actual browsing of exhibits (dioramas, videos, artifacts, etc) was probably more rushed than they would have been with English signage, so that is a point to keep in mind depending on what you look for in a museum visit.  I think they did have an English audio tour, but with a seven-year old, that was off the negotiation list this time. 

There were more than enough hands on experiences set up, with real workings of how the trains run, stay on the tracks, electrical displays, going inside of each model, replicas of the engineer controls and other things for both kids and adults to experiment with. The first floor had all of the train displays, enabling you to see them from most angles (stairs to go under them, open inside and stairs to even go above a few). The second floor had a huge model train display and the third had other kid-friendly working displays such as a model of an old train station, complete with real (fake/free) tickets and working entry gates.

Once we emerged out the back of the building and into the actual train yard, we opted to pay the few hundred yen for steam locomotive tickets (a 15 minute “back and forth” joy ride).  We (myself and Terra) also got our first taste of stamp collecting, where you hit up different stations located within the tourism spot to "stamp" a booklet you usually receive with your entry ticket, which is a very famous activity in Japan for these destinations.  There would be many stamps to come in my near future. We started to get a little tired and hungry and decided to leave at 4PM after a brief visit to the souvenir shop. Trying to save the taxi money, the Google told us it was only about a mile and would take approximately 30 minutes to walk back to the mall, conveniently located across from where we were staying, so we took the gamble and went with it. 

It indeed only took 30 minutes to arrive and the walk through Kyoto neighborhoods was pleasant. The mall was huge to U.S. standards, towering at 6 floors in the main wing and an additional 4 floors on the second wing (of which, the entire first floor was an honest to goodness Toys R Us). I was pleased to see a grocery store occupying about a quarter of the first floor, and we discovered the top floor was a standard "food court" full of eateries and a real (even though small to their standards) Namco arcade.  Myself and Terra got the Ramen and Matt opted for Bibimbap (seen above), sitting down in a food court I continued to make observations of a more modern Japanese society than experienced in 2010.  Cell phones, children and digital forth comings were everywhere.  It was a relaxed and very familiar atmosphere overall.  Though there was still little English to be had, communicating in a whole presented no issues thus far. 

Before heading out for the night, I couldn’t help but get our first exposure to an arcade, full of UFO catchers, Taiko drums and other fun hands on machines. I won my first prize within a few attempts (a Kirby blanket), we played Mario Kart and had it out for a few songs on the Taiko drums.  We took a quick stop at the grocery store before wrapping it up for the night (the first place to be bit overwhelming), eventually getting what we needed and headed back to our house to settle in.  I was super satisfied with the house as it was located less than a 10 minute walk from central Kyoto station and within a 3 minute walk from the correct exit of the mall (took me awhile to figure this one out, however). The entire atmosphere here was something I could get used to, seeing groups of teenagers out by themselves, kids enjoying shopping and an overall atmosphere of safely walking and being part of a larger social construct was nice.  I was ready to have a good time, and determined to make it a relaxing one.