After a good couple hours on the shinkansen, we finally reached Kyoto! Kyoto station has such awesome design. =D
After marveling for a bit at their design, I immediately switch my attention to the task at hand – to purchase our ICOCA card and the Haruka bundle. ICOCA was initially the prepaid transport card (something like Suica in Tokyo) in Kansai, but in recent years they’ve been accepted almost everywhere in Japan, just like Suica. We could actually have used our Suica cards (since we did not return them), but there is this bundle where you get to buy Haruka ticket (the shinkansen from Kyoto to Kansai Airport) at almost half price if you produce an ICOCA card. So I decided to get the bundle instead of using Suica in Kyoto and buying Haruka Express ticket separately. After spending a good amount of time queueing, we finally got our ICOCA and the Haruka Express tickets! Time to find our way to the hotel!
Google Maps really helped a whole lot in our Japan trip, as we rely mainly on it for normal commute. We found a few buses that will bring us to our hotel, so we just pick the fastest route. Thank goodness we’ve already arranged our big luggage to be forwarded to our hotel in advance, so we don’t need to deal with lugging big bags up the buses. True to the schedule (as with all Japan’s transport), the bus arrived and up we went. The interesting procedure about Kyoto buses is that you board from the rear door, and you alight at the front door. You only pay the fare when you alight. So different from our Singapore system. The super nice feature of their buses is that every stop is clearly indicated on the LCD screen at the front of the bus as it approaches the next stop, so everyone will not miss their stop if they are alert. The announcements are made in Japanese and English, and they will even inform you that if you want to go to certain main tourist attractions, you should get down at this stop, etc. Very tourist-friendly!
By the time we alighted at the stop that’s near to our hotel, it was already pitch dark, and it was only at around 5+pm! Kyoto was windy, but not as windy as Shinjuku, so we were still able to bear with the cold. So with the help of Google Maps again, we found the nice little red building tucked into a small “hole” along the street. The hotel that I booked for us is Hotel Mume, and it was actually suggested by Bruno because he was wow-ed by reviews and articles about this hotel. This is a small boutique hotel, not those typical chain hotels. There are only 7 rooms available in this boutique hotel, so yup, everything is VERY personalised here.
So we knocked on the door (like I said, it’s a very “personal” hotel), and the staff opened it for us, greeting us with a HUGE smile on their faces. They asked how was our stay at Shirakawa-Go (they remembered EVERYTHING I mentioned in our previous email correspondences), whether if it’s hard to find the hotel, etc, and promptly led us to the dining area to seat us down for some welcome drinks and snacks (and also because it’s still well within their “happy hours”).
Everything is free (well, in the sense, paid for), including whatever alcoholic drinks that you order. So while we munched on the nuts and sipped our drinks, they came over to get our payment (which I prepared in cash), and one of the staff promptly came to us with all maps in his hands, and asked where we intended to go for the next few days, where we intended to go after checking in, etc. Then he drew arrows on the city maps, showing us the best route to get to the place – where we get to see interesting sights instead of just going the main road (which Google Maps will suggest). He made sure we definitely won’t be lost, and had no questions for him, before he left our table. And guess what? They’ve already put our luggages in our room even before we got there!
After we were done with the drinks and snacks, we were then being shown into our room – which was… very very pretty. Even that, was an understatement. The room’s decoration was so tastefully done, and the room seemed small on the first glance, but we somehow managed to move around pretty well with two big luggage for the next four days. The King bed was so plush and comfortable. Their toilet / shower room just looked so sparkling clean and new, and the toilet bowl was totally automatic. And when I meant automatic, I don’t mean just the flush. Heck, the toilet bowl will open the lid on its own when it senses movement! After awhile with no movement detected, the lid will close on its own! Gosh, talk about toilet technology! The only thing we had issue was with the room heater. They did not have “aircon”, so we had to make do with switching off the heater and opening the windows just a little bit for the cold air to come through.
After rearranging our day bags a little, we went off to Pontocho Alley in search for our dinner. Mume had kept asking me months before our trip, whether if we want them to help with bookings of any restaurants, but I kindly rejected their offer because well, I don’t think we can afford such high end places, and besides, we don’t like to be tied down with reservations and appointments. So, we stick to the advised path by the Mume staff, and that was a cobbled path, with very very old-style Japanese houses at the side of a small river. I didn’t take any photos while walking to Pontocho (because I was hungry!), but I did took quite a few while we were walking back.
Anyway, we reached Pontocho Alley in no time and started down the alley for our dinner hunt!
There were so many choices, that one can easily be undecisive what to go for. For us, the main thing is the price. Unfortunately, a lot of restaurants in Pontocho Alley are either Izakayas (sake bars with finger food) or very high end Japanese restaurants. I almost gave up, until we came across a shop that sells fried beef cutlets. Uh huh, they call it Katsugyu. Katsu being fried, and gyu being beef. No, it’s not a blasphemy. Who says beef must only be grilled for it to be good? Take a good look at my photos below.
Yup, this is our dinner, and I can tell you, it tasted fantastic! The beef still looked somewhat raw (medium raw, perhaps), but it tasted so gooooood! Being the cheapskate us, we ordered the cheapest on the menu, and that’s already so good! The curry that came with the cutlet… O.M.G. I can never eat curry rice in Singapore again. It will NEVER be the same!
After the ultra-satisfying dinner, we slowly strolled back to the hotel the same way, and this time I took some night shots of the lovely path.
We stopped by a Family Mart to get our beloved instant soups, before going back to the hotel to work and rest for the day. Yup, I was still working when I was on holiday… sigh.
For more photos on this day, please click on my Flickr album link here. (Most of the photos are here on this page already, though.)
For Japan Trip 2017 itinerary / content page, please click here.
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