Today was intended to be a half day of travel as we leave Kyoto and head into the Japanese Alps. Since the typhoon ended up being no more than a glorified thunderstorm for us, we packed ourselves up and still headed to the train station as planned. We were able to book our first ticket which was the high speed bullet train, and upon arrival to our first stop, we were able to book our second leg. All seemed well in the neighborhood until about 30 minutes after buying the ticket, and we started getting the dreaded ‘delay’ notifications, then the ‘cancellation’ notifications. We already had almost two hours in between the trains, and then our 11:35 train turned into a 2:45 train which meant we had a lot of time to kill in this random city we didn’t realize we were going to visit.
A craft store, local crafting booths, food booths and camera shop later, we still had about two hours to burn, so we wandered over to an anime shop [still looking for a trinket for my lil bud]. Success there and we were finally ready to board our train.
Since we had stocked up on typhoon food, we had plenty for the trip which included not one, not two but three repeats because we liked them so much.
Quick walk to our home for the next three days — a traditional Japanese home that was converted from a store room [the massive cellar doors in the middle of this thing are crazy]. The floors are traditional tatami mats which are made from rice straw and woven into rugs. Wood floors require you to wear slippers in the home, the bathroom even has it’s own set of ‘bathroom’ slippers, and you should wear socks on the tatami mats, all out of respect for the home. Kevin is not sad about constantly wearing slippers, or as he calls them, work shoes.
The area we are staying in is most known for Hida beef, so for dinner naturally we had to try it. We also had our first bowl of ramen of the trip. Not being fish eaters, ramen has made us nervous knowing that most ramen shops smell of fish sauce and seaweed. This one wasn’t bad, but the hida beef bowl was definitely the highlight. We may have to come back to get that again…
