{"id":1573,"date":"2012-12-29T04:20:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-29T12:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/?p=1573"},"modified":"2013-02-09T15:42:21","modified_gmt":"2013-02-09T23:42:21","slug":"shinkansen-to-kyoto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/2012\/12\/29\/shinkansen-to-kyoto","title":{"rendered":"Shinkansen to Kyoto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Packed and cleaned our wonderful apartment on our last day in Tokyo. It was a great space, larger than we were expecting, very convenient to transit and in an “interesting” part of town. I felt differently about the ubiquitous massage parlors after reading Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice<\/a>, but they added a local character we wouldn’t have seen unless staying among them. And it was reasonably priced, a rarity in this expensive city.<\/p>\n

\"Cheap<\/a><\/p>\n

Cheap sashimi in ginza<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

John is heading back today, but we spent the morning together and headed toward the Tokyo train station as a group. Stuffed his pack into a locker and went in search of more sushi. We found a great place in Ginza, set up for office workers to get quick fresh fish. Not pretentious, but excellent and surprisingly cheap.<\/p>\n

John also made sure we went to the famous Hidemi Sugino patisserie, whose eponymous chef was the first “oriental” to win the world cup of pastry<\/a> and makes incredible mousse concoctions. With our bellies full of cheap fish and pricy pastries, we were off; John to one more afternoon in Tokyo, and us to the bullet train.<\/p>\n

We picked up our one-week pass and made a bunch of reservations for our next legs. The day’s reserved seats to Kyoto were all sold, but we could still wait in line and get into the non-reserved cabin. With trains every 15 minutes, we didn’t have to wait long, and got to experience one more Japanese-style scrum.<\/p>\n

\"Queue<\/a><\/p>\n

Queue for the non-reserved seats<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
\n\"Picking<\/a><\/p>\n

Picking up speed<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n



\nWe sat on the right to see Mt Fuji, but the clouds and the setting sun made that impossible. But with 7-days of unlimited train travel, we’ll try and make it back. The train is amazing, covering the 370km (230mi) between Tokyo and Kyoto in about 2:30, hitting up to 300kph (~185mph). Can’t wait until we get our act together and build these in California. It’s embarrassing it has taken us this long. <\/p>\n

\"Arrived<\/a><\/p>\n

Arrived in Kyoto after 2:15<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Packed and cleaned our wonderful apartment on our last day in Tokyo. It was a great space, larger than we were expecting, very convenient to transit and in an “interesting” part of town. I felt differently about the ubiquitous massage parlors after reading Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice, but they added a local character we wouldn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-1573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","tag-kyoto"],"geo":{"latitude":34.9899216,"longitude":135.7647705,"description":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1573"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1702,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions\/1702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/josh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}