Last nights Japanese meal was another five courses but this time we were allowed to sit up to a table rather than on the floor as we had the night before. We were quite glad that meals were included as it was raining quite heavily and only got worse as the night went on, to the point that it woke us up where it was lashing against the windows in the night. Luckily this morning although there was a lot of cloud it had stopped raining so after breakfast we took the funicular down to Gora which is the local town to have a walk round, safe to say there isn’t a lot to Gora so we got back on the funicular and came back to the hotel. We were being picked up by a taxi at 11 and by the time we had gathered everything up and checked out it was about 10.30 so we sat by reception until the driver arrived about ten to. The drive to Odawara was uneventful and the cloud lifted as we came down the mountain so it looked promising for a view of Mount Fuji from the train. We got to the station about half an hour before our train so after having a wander round, finding a cash machine and buying some drinks / snacks for the journey we went onto the platform and watched a couple of bullet trains come through, they don’t slow down at all for the station and it is quite a sight as they come through at full speed. As with all things Japanese our train arrived exactly on time, and we hoped we had fantastic views of Mount Fuji as the sky’s are defiantly clearing so after eating our snacks we settled in for the couple of hours to Kyoto, we did have wonderful views of Mount Fuji despite the fact that bullet trains kept whizzing past! We arrived as expected exactly on time and set off in search of a taxi, our options were small and medium or medium and large – as we didn’t have much luggage we went for the small and medium! The journey to the hotel only took about 15 minutes which unfortunately meant that we arrived before 3pm so we couldn’t check in but we could see our bags so the good news is despite the independent traveling they did turn up in Kyoto, not sure we will do that again but at least it did work. We decided we would walk to tourist information to pick up a map of the area and by the time we had done this it was past 3pm so we went back to the hotel and went to our room where we took the opportunity to repack the bags then went to the bar to try and work out where we want to eat tonight. We set off early as we had decided we would go to a noodle bar which according to the website gets quite busy. The food was really nice or it could just have been that it didn’t involve raw fish! After that we went for a walk around then finally brought a coffee and went back to the room to update the website and have a rest before we go round Kyoto with the guide tomorrow.
