Tarui

This morning we awoke to torrential rain in Hakone, perfect weather to take another onsen before breakfast! After breakfast we had to check out and brave the weather as we needed to get to Kyoto. In the 5 minute walk to the bus stop we were already saturated. We then crossed the road (which was starting to look like a river) to get a bus.

We're unsure if we timed it poorly, or if everyone was escaping the weather, but the first 3 buses were all completely full and couldn't let us on. We waited on the train for an hour, water speed through our jackets and the wind chilled us to the bone. A bus finally came with room for us, and we were even able to get a seat with hot air blowing up from underneath to defrost ourselves.

We made it back to Kanagawa train station where Vela managed to work out the coffee machine and made herself a hot matcha latte (mood definitely improved from that point). We then marveled at the bullet trains, impressive when parked for their size, and maybe more impressive when moving for their speed. A conservative estimate puts their speed at 180km/h at least when they were going through the station.

On board we travelled through seaside towns, across braided rivers, and through multiple tunnels. Nathan finally saw a cloud in Japan worth taking a photo of! We took advantage of the free wifi to get some planning and visa work done for Europe.

We arrived in Kyoto, and after a brief mix up with our hotel, we found it. We're staying in a very cute little building, sandwiches between two much larger buildings. This is not the narrowest building we've seen, but definitely the narrowest we've stayed in!Read more