Onwards to Kyoto

Figured it’s easier to board a slow train at the Osaka station rather than to transfer to a shinkansen at Shin-Osaka. After all the journey’s so short that there’s no meaningful difference in journey length. The attached photograph is a warning sign on the railway platform – supposedly there’s a special tool to pick up stray hats from the rails. Useful indeed in a country where some of the trains reach speeds of 300+ kilometers per hour.

The ride was short indeed, and the arrival in the Kyoto station painless. Dropped by the the travel bureau familiar from the 2004 trip and picked up a brochure on daytrips in the city. A lot of Kyoto’s top sights are scattered around the city, and thus hopping on a tourbus is the easiest way of seeing them.