Day Eight - Derailed at Nagoya

This morning we managed another sleep-in before packing up everything and vacating our traditional Japanese home. We have really enjoyed this place and would recommend it to everybody visiting Kyoto. After clearing and cleaning each room, I took some photographs.

We then headed off to good old Emmachi Station for our last train ride passing the three stations into Kyoto Station. 

We grabbed breakfast-to-go at Kyoto Station and headed for the Shinkansen lines to catch our train to Tokyo. We boarded the train and headed on on our very fast ride.

As we were motoring along, the ticket collector came by doing his thing. As usual, Kyle nonchalantly waved the week-long Japan Rail Pass that has allowed us to travel just about everywhere we have so far. The ticket collector replies that the pass is no good for this particular Shinkansen ride as it's a Nozomi train. Nozomi was originally the premier Shinkansen service with only a limited number of trains and no non-reserved cars, so they were excluded from discount deals such as the Japan Rail Pass. So Kyle asked what we should do, and the ticket collector told him that we needed to deboard at the next station, Nagoya! So, off-loaded we were, and we had to wait a whole 17 minutes for the next correct Shinkansen service to take us to Tokyo.

Greetings from Nagoya...train station

The ride between Nagoya and Tokyo seemed to go quite quickly. We were again treated to lovely views of Mount Fuji which had a layer of cloud around its base. 

We stopped at a few stations before arriving at Tokyo just after 1200h. 

We then headed to another platform to catch the next train to our home for the next week, Akihabara. Akihabara (also called Akiba) after a former local shrine, is a district in central Tokyo that is famous for its many electronics shops. In recent years, it has gained recognition as the center of Japan's Otaku culture, and many shops and establishments devoted to anime and manga are now dispersed among the electronic stores in the district.

Our home is an apartment just a few blocks from the 'Electric Town' part of Akihabara. It's a large apartment, very modern and very clean. Whilst Maureen and I relaxed at our new 'home', Sky, Kyle and Jen headed out to do some exploring. We kept it pretty relaxed for the remainder of the day, heading out for dinner and basically sitting down and relaxing...except for Sky, he was itching to have another crack at Electric Town. As for Kyle and Jen, they headed to a Hedgehog Cafe.

Nawww...