Day 4 - Sunday April 23, 2017 - Kyoto

Time to head to Kyoto. We were planning on taking a train about 10.30 but, after we had breakfast, we were packed and ready to go by 9 so headed to the station and took the 9.30 train, changing again at Chayamachi and then to Okayama. As we were booked on a specific Shinkansen to Kyoto, that gave us an extra hour to kill in Okayama, so we went and had a very mediocre and overpriced coffee. As always, the Shinkansen to Kyoto arrived, departed and arrived again bang on time.

When we got to Kyoto Station, we stopped in the ticket office that has an ‘English spoken’ section and got tickets to the airport for next week. “Golden Week”, a succession of four public holidays within a week, starts next Saturday and we didn’t want to risk turning up at the station to find the train we wanted to take to the airport was sold out. With that done, we headed to the hotel.

We walked up to the Nishiki Market which, not surprisingly for a Sunday afternoon, was absolutely packed. Lunch consisted of some snacks from the market and a matcha ice cream. We then went in search of a needle store that Anne-Margaret wanted to find – we’d failed the last two times we were here but this time thought we had finally figured out where it was. Eventually, and without some difficulty, we managed to find it – a small store in a courtyard down a very narrow alleyway. [The entrance to the alleyway leading to the store is at crusher.shoving.directs and the store itself at dizzy.performs.whispers]. They have supposedly been making needles for 400 years and though Anne-Margaret was tempted, she settled for three pins, which have very small flowers (made of resin) on top. The two gentlemen in the shop were probably father and son. When Anne-Margaret asked if it was ok to take a picture, the younger one – whose hairline was receding – worried about ‘shiny face’ … as did his father. When I pointed out I was the same, there was much merriment all round.

We eventually made our way back to the hotel, stopping at the supermarket down the street to get some supplies for breakfast etc. For dinner, we went to a soba noodle restaurant next door – it seemed to get uniformly good reviews and was busy when we got there at 7 so we had to wait 20 minutes or so. They hand-make the soba noodles in an area next to the waiting area, so watching that kept us occupied. By the time we left about 8, the lobby area was absolutely packed with people waiting.