For our spring trip to Japan, we wanted to visit three major cities in Japan which are Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. However, Tokyo and Kyoto are located three hours apart (by shinkansen) while Kyoto and Osaka are located merely 15 minutes apart (by the same shinkansen, no joke). In order to cut our travelling time, we decided to make Kyoto our starting point and hence, we went straight from Haneda Airport to Kyoto. That's exactly why we needed to activate our Japan Rail (JR) Pass immediately. You must make sure not to lose this JR Pass as this pass will be your useful item for travelling in Japan. One thing to take note, JR Pass will only entitled you to travel on Hikari-typed train which is the second fastest train available in Japan.
However, if you wanted to book seats for your shinkansen journey, you still need to book seats at the shinkansen ticket counter. You will be issued a piece of card called "Reserved Card Ticket". With this ticket on hand, you don't have to worry having to let go your seats and can sit in peace until you reach your destination.
In order to take shinkansen to Kyoto, we need to make a stop in Shinagawa Station because there is no direct route from Haneda Airport to Kyoto. Shinagawa Station is a busy station whereby a lot of people bustling here and there.
There are department store selling food such as bento (re: meal box) and bread for commuters travelling by train. The situation of the department store? Madness because a lot of commuters are busy buying their dinner after work at that timing (around 5 or 6ish in the evening). This does not deter us to buy bento for ourselves though because when you are in Japan, do like what the Japanese do. Hehehe.
Once we have bought our bento and our mandatory toilet visit is completed, we waited for the train at our designated entrance door. Love the fact that everything is totally in order in Japan, especially the queue line.
The shinkansen is clean and quite comfortable. Even though the commuters are allowed to eat inside the train, nobody is throwing trash wherever they like. This kind of attitude is really hard to maintain in other country but not in Japan. People inside the train do not speak loudly too when they are talking to one another.
Halfway through the journey to Kyoto, we took out our lovely bento box. Every bento box in Japan is packed nicely. And I heard different area sells different kind of bento, that's really something to look forward to whenever you travel to different part of Japan.
For our first train bento experience, we chose to have gyudon + tamago (re: stir fried beef slices and egg) rice box. Noted that the egg in Japan taste kinda sweet but it is not something bad though. We can taste a hint of teriyaki sauce used in stir frying the gyudon. Overall, quite good bento.
Can't wait to reach Kyoto. =)
