Day 11 - Sunday April 30, 2017 -
It’s the Sunday of Golden Week and the weather forecast is for 27 degrees, so probably a day for not doing very much and avoiding the crowds – a bit of gentle perambulation around town.
We took the subway the one stop down to Kyoto Station, this time using it as a ‘dry run’ for next Thursday morning, when we have to get to Kansai Airport for our Finnair flight to Helsinki. We’re booked on the 6.44 am train to the airport (limited express Haruka # 5) so will take the 6.07 subway train. There is a 6.21 subway but leaving a bit more time seems prudent.
Our dry run worked fine: get on the back of the train (last door), exit right, up the escalator, exit the gates on the left, go straight ahead, turn left at the first passageway, past Starbucks (on the right), up the escalator, turn right and head through the Central entrance to the station and straight ahead through the barriers to track 30.
Kyoto Station is an amazing structure with a soaring atrium. However, once you stray from that central atrium, it can also be an amazingly confusing place (as we have discovered on more than one occasion, though we’re better at it now than we used to be). There are two main exits – one on the north side and one on the south; if you need to get from one side to the other, you either have to go up or go down because the tracks (running east/west) are in the way. Better to go up. Down is two basement floors of a myriad of shops (that also extend out underneath the north side of the station) and which soon turns into a confusing rabbit warren. The atrium is effectively 11 stories tall, with escalators running all the way up the north-western side, along the side of the Isetan department store. If you go all the way up the escalators (most of which you can’t see from ground level because of the angle), you can get off at various floors of Isetan or, as we do, go all the way up – the ramen restaurants are on the left on the 10th floor and the 11th floor has a variety of different restaurants.
We headed to the BIC Camera store for a look round. It opens at 10 am so we were a few minutes early and waited outside with everyone else. It may once have been a camera store chain, but it’s now seven floors of every conceivable electronic device. Apart from the iPhone covers, we checked out the bidet toilets and some of the bathroom stuff.
Starbucks for coffee. Although we would totally disdain (= wouldn’t be seen dead in) a Starbucks at home, when abroad it has its uses and a double espresso is usually reliable. As we were already at the station, we headed upstairs for lunch. We had a wander round but ended up back at the ramen places on the 10th floor, this time trying a different place (Sumire). Fortunately, they offered us bibs which, in my case, was just as well.