8D Avia Japan Tour: Shinkansen Ride from Osaka to Kyoto
Within 4 hours, our itinerary with Avia tour on Osaka is nearly ended. We are about to make our way to the next city on the itinerary, Kyoto. I thought we were going there by bus (which journey takes 1 hour) but turns out Avia tour has booked us a shinkansen trip (with the most expensive ticket to save time) from Osaka to Kyoto. My mom was pretty surprised that the tour includes this short shinkansen trip but pleased, nonetheless. Without further ado, let’s make our way to Shin-Osaka Station to board our shinkansen.
If you have time to spend, I suggest you to spend it by checking out the stores in the shinkansen station. They are filled with many interesting goodies. The first thing that caught my attention is the pretty train bento. Don’t you think all of them looks so yummy? I am not the only one who think that because as you can see, some of these bentos are already sold out at 3PM in the afternoon on a Tuesday.
The souvenir (i.e. omiyage in Japanese) store is also stocked with some of the area’s specialities although you will definitely able to find Kitkat anywhere you go. Mochi, manju, cookies and biscuits are usually among the usual favorite at these stores as well. If you are looking for a limited edition type of Kitkat which is tied to specific region in Japan, you can get them at the convenience stores located in that region’s train station. This is because the international airport may not have these type of region’s Kitkat. For instance, I did not see Hojicha Kitkat (the one in brown box) at Narita International Airport when I went back to Jakarta.
Vending machine with various type of hot and cold drink is definitely also available in the station. Even Brown has difficulty choosing one for the train ride. Uhm Brown, you do know that our shinkansen ride from Shin-Osaka Station to Kyoto Station only takes 15 minutes right?
If you don’t know what to buy for your relatives and friends back home, I strongly recommend buying this green tea cookies (the Japanese named it langue-de-chat) from Malebranche. It’s basically a layer of white chocolate sandwiched between two green tea biscuits. I personally think they’ll make good pairing with bland green tea because they are leaning toward the sweet side. The best thing about them is they are available at various packaging so if you don’t want to buy a box of them, you can go for the small bag instead. There are 5 biscuits inside one small bag for JPY 680. It’s easier to give to people when you buy a box of it though because their box packaging is so nice and you don’t even need to wrap it anymore because the store will have already wrapped it for you. Smalles box costs JPY 1,360 with 8 biscuits inside.
Brown did not have a lot of money so he bought the small bag for Cony. Cony loves it nonetheless. Thank you dear Brown. Hehehe.
After we have finished window-shopping (and shopping), it’s time to board the shinkansen. To be honest with you, we were nearly get left out because our tour leader has left with the other tour participants when we arrived at the meeting point. Geez, why could not he count his group before he board the shinkansen, really? Thankfully Irma picked us up while we were confused at the meeting point and hurried us to board the train within 4 minutes. Well, after living in Singapore for 10 years, 4 minutes is a lot of time to board a train.
The ticket that Avia tour bought for us does not have designated seats so we can only board certain free-seating carriages of the train. This works kinda similar to the High Speed Rail (HSR) in Taiwan. Since the train ride is considered super short at 15 minutes, I did not really have the time to look at the cart selling bento inside the train. Too bad, I kinda wanted to try eating train bento on a train ride. Next time, I guess.
For your information, the ticket with unreserved seats from Osaka to Kyoto costs JPY 1,420 while a reserved seat ticket costs twice as much. Oh boy, convenience does not come cheap in Japan I suppose.