Kawaguchiko to Nara Japan 21st October 2015
A fond farewell to Yuko and Cam,the boys,Ingrid,Andy,the twins and Virginia.Geoff and Gay and us two head for the station.G and G heading for Kyoto and us for Nara.We get a bus to Mishima where we are to board the Shinkansen for Kyoto.At the bus stop are two women from Texas who are complaining about the food and the hotels and apparently require a bag bigger than Texas for a 2 day stay!!.
We sort out our tickets out at the station purchase some delicious baked goods from the Hakone Bakery and head for the platform.The first Shinkansen bulleting past the platform at 200kms an hour is a bit of a shock but after a while they seem commonplace.Typically everything just works with our carriage number being displayed on the platform where you line up to board and our train Hikari 743 arrives right on the dot.I start to have a mild panic when I realise that our connection is ony 13 minutes to the train for Nara.We say our farewells to Geoff and Gay who we have become geniuinely fond of in a very short time.They are our type of people,open and friendly and obviously family oriented.We belt off the train and head for our connection which is on a Kintetsu train which is a separate company to Japan Rail and a private operator.Fortunately the gates are right opposite where we come off the Shinkansen and abley assisted by an uniformed information person load up my Pasmo card and we are away.
We arrive in Nara on schedule and are met by our host Chiaki who drives us to our “tiny house” which is in her front garden.It is a typical 6 tatami set-up,simple and clean.Chiaki lives in a suburb of Nara which she describes as a village.There is easy access to restaurants and the ubiquitous 711 both about 10 minutes walk away.We walk past a few until we come to one where we look inside to determine what was on offer,the very forward “maitre d”comes out of the tiny restaurant and herds us inside with the command “sit down”.We establish that they do in fact have beer and decide to stay-with all the locals in the place in various stages of hysterical laughter.But a good meal and lots of fun.We find out later that the restaurant is called Kimmee Chan and is quite well known.
Posted with Blogsy
