Day 4: Trip to Japan (7 April 2010)

At Tokyo eki waiting to board the shinkansen.

The fourth day in Japan is full of travelling. After checking out from the Washington Hotel in Shinjuku, we took a train to Tokyo eki. From there, we took the shinkansen headed for Kyoto. The bullet train that we took was the Hikari Superexpress. The journey on this superexpress is approximately 2 hours 45 minutes covering a distance of nearly 500 km. I have been told that a normal journey by road will take about 6 hours. The shinkansen only stopped briefly at four stations (Shin-Yokohama, Shizuoka, Hamamatsu and Nagoya) before arriving at Kyoto.

View of Kyoto from the hotel room.

When we arrived at Kyoto, we promptly checked into the Granvia Hotel which is conveniently located inside the eki itself.

Later that evening, we took the train to Minami-Kusatsu eki to meet up with Malaysian students from Ritsumeikan University. The meeting place, a family restaurant called "Syazeria", took 15 minutes to walk to. We managed to meet up with 15 students from the university - a master's student, 9 final year students and 5 third year students.

It was a very full but productive day. By the time, we returned to the hotel, it was already close to 11:00 p.m.

Personally I was exhausted, but I was happy that our objective for the day has been met.