Rosie and The Operator have the little Kyoto Metro sorted. We have been whizzing around town on it and it is super handy as Kyoto city is quite spread out and some of the sights are far removed from each other.
Our little Shinjuku jinx in Tokyo is long forgotten and The Operator has been seamless in his guidance and boarding. We seem to have perfected arriving at a station, racing down the stairs as a train stops at the station, hopping straight on and we are off. We are Metro legends! Until today….our cocky legendary status is about to come to an end…..abruptly.
Rosie and The Operator are catching the above ground train to the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. Its right on the edge of town and on the weekend the train services are limited, we wanted to get there early and we didn’t want to miss our train. We bought our tickets, and proceeded to the platform with plenty of time to spare.
Now the key to the Kyoto train network with it being smallish…..trains going to different destinations are sharing the same line. We knew this, we also knew there was an earlier express train to the bamboo forest and it was pulling in just as we arrived on the platform…..we made a split second decision to jump on this train as we were there waiting being so super organised….why wait another 15 mins.
The train pulls in we jump on it, crowing about how awesome we were and how much time we are going to save. Rosie even thinks we high fived each other cause we were super awesome!
Rosie and The Operator sat down in the super comfy chairs…..looked around…..and our stomachs dropped. OMG…comfy seats….this isnt a local train….the other passengers had breakfast snacks in front of them and cups of coffee, some were ready the paper and some were snoozing.
Rosie and The Operator looked at each other….we had just hopped on a high speed train and god knows where we were going! Rosie felt sick. No English names of the stops were scrolling above the carriage door and all announcements were being made in Japanese.
We were trying to work out what to do when we flashed past the little station we were headed too. Sit back and relax Rosie, what can we do? said The Operator, we can only wait till the train stops again.
OMG OMG OMG…Rosie was freaking out….she was more worried they were going to be busted on the train without a ticket. The Operator was worried about having to pay for a ticket on a ride we didn’t want.
We are travelling out into the countryside, mountains and rivers are flashing past the window, beautiful scenery that Rosie cant take in. We are going in and out of tunnels and flashing through stations, we are not stopping anywhere! Rosie has visions of the next stop being Hiroshima…our destination tomorrow and an hour down the line.
We are sitting there quietly panicking for twenty minutes before the train starts to slow down and stops at a station. To this day I do not where we ended up. We got off that train quick smart and there was a train on the tracks on the opposite platform pointing the way we had come. We asked this time…YES, it was going back to Kyoto.
Rosie asked The Operator what about a ticket for this ride? Hopefully it was going to stop at the station we were ultimately heading for. The Operator reckoned we didnt need a ticket, as we exited the station at the Bamboo Forest stop it would record our original ticket as us arriving at our destination…the scanner dosen’t know we went on a tiki tour. OK….
Rosie has never been more please to be on a slow train stopping at every station we came to…we got off at the suburb if Arashiyama where we were originally headed…no more panicking, it was still early, only 0815. Lets just go and enjoy the day! Rosie really needs a coffee after that.
