April 4th, 2015 - Travel Day - Day 231
Peter's POV
Today was our first slow morning in Tokyo. My sister and I woke up around 7:45 and tried to call our parents, but no one was there to answer. We tried to get a little more sleep before calling them again about an hour later, thankfully they were there because Lea and I where starving and we had no food. My dad told me that he had two cinnamon scones waiting in his room for us. When we were done with breakfast we packed up and relaxed until 11:30.
At 11:30 we left the hotel to go and get on the subway. When we got to the station, we still needed to get tickets, food and get to the train and we had about 45 minutes. Our plan was for Lea to sit with the bags while I got us a snack and my parents when to try and get discounted tickets. After about 5 minutes after I got back from getting me and Lea a snack, my parents showed up and told us that they needed to go and get tickets at the counter so we needed to wait. When they finally got us our tickets my mom took us with her to get lunch in a supermarket. We found what we wanted pretty quickly and were off toward the train. When we got to the tracks we found that the train wasn't there yet. We waited for about 10 minutes until it showed up and used that time to drop a sticker on Tokyo:
We found our seats and were off, towards Kyoto on a bullet train.
Cherry blossoms at 200MPH
After a smooth 2 and a half hour journey our train pulled into Kyoto station. We found our way out of the station and found the line to get a taxi. It was probably 20 people long. The system seemed very ineffective because there were just as many taxis waiting to pick people up as people waiting to be picked up. This was so unusual for Japan as every other thing we have encountered has been so efficient.
When we got our taxi driver he said that he knew were our house was. However, did not speak a word of english other than ok and thank you so it was a good thing my parents had printed out the directions to the house in Japanese.
We found our house in about 20 minutes, the outside and surrounding area is very cute. When we walked into our house we thought that it was very cool, but VERY SMALL. We are staying in a historic district in Kyoto in a traditional Japanese home called a Machiya. My dad says it is about 650 square feet big. When we found our room we looked around for the beds because our room was just a room.
Our room before the makeover
There was no beds or anything. We looked in the closets and found camping mattress like things and made the room our own.
Makeover complete
My parents left to go and get groceries while we finished up our room.
When they got back we made dinner and watched a movie and fell into bed exhausted from another travel day.