Day 13

We woke up in the ryokan and had breakfast included from 7-9 am. It was a buffet breakfast (more traditional ones are in your room), and when we smelled it from the elevator, we knew things weren't going to go well. There were grills on the tables, where you'd grill the fish that they had out for breakfast. Everything had heads and tails, or at the least skin on it. There was also a little bit of fruit, which is what we had. I was surprised that there weren't any eggs since they love eggs, but no such luck. We were in and out in under 5 minutes.  No one noticed/cared, so we got out of there.

They amazingly had a shuttle to the train station, so we hopped on that and went to Kyoto Station before going to Toei Studio Park, where they in theory shoot Samurai movies. With everyone traveling, we were worried about getting a train out that evening, so wanted to buy tickets in advance to get from Kyoto to Tokyo. We bought tickets for 5:30 (we had to go with the green car, which is like first class, if we wanted to sit together), and then tried to figure out what to do with the luggage. There was a luggage drop off area that was full, so no one was allowed to drop off anything else. Every coin locker in the place was filled and there were people looking for lockers all over the place. We found a nice Australian woman who was waiting for her husband to get back to get their stuff out of the locker, so we waited to get the locker. They had been in the locker over the time limit, so he needed to get more money to open it. The key was in the door and everyone was swarming the locker, so we had to shoo them away. They came back and grabbed their stuff, and we were able to fit in one of our cases.

We took the other case with us on the train to the Studio Park. It was a tiny station, but they had one locker available. We squished the luggage it (it barely fit), and there was another couple waiting for us to fail to put their luggage in. We got it and headed out to the Studio Park. We walked a little bit off the path, but saw a cute pet store with puppies for sale, and then got on the right path. The line to get in was really long, but we got in line to wait it out.

It cost 2200 yen each to get in (~$18), and they really nickel and dime you. There were about 8 different attractions where you have to pay extra to get in. We walked some of the old streets and took Dave's picture everywhere. One of the things that you could do is pay to either wear a costume or get makeup and then walk around. The Samurai one was really cool because they gave you a hair cap/wig that looked like a Samurai. We thought it might be funny to put it on Dave and then take photos. There were a few people looking at the different costumes, but there were maybe 3 makeup artists not doing anything. We picked one look and asked for the wait time. The lady told us they were "too busy" and couldn't take us. Yes, it was busy there, but there were 3 people not doing anything and the same lady had just been helping the other Japanese customers. We're not sure how busy they really were...Basically - I would not recommend this place to anyone - what a huge waste of time and money! They did have some shows with ninjas, etc., but that standing room only was overflowing, so really no point. What a huge disappointment.

We took another wrong turn while walking and it took a while to  get back to the train station. We grabbed our luggage and went back to the Kyoto Station, which was soooo busy. We went around looking for somewhere to eat, but didn't see anything that had room or wasn't overpriced. We saw a Daiso dollar store across the street and figured there would be other places as well. There was a McDonald's and we were almost crying in relief. (that's how much Kyoto sucked!) We sat down and got some food and more importantly cold drinks, and then went to the Daiso store. From there, we went back to the train station to find out other luggage and the correct track to get on since we didn't want to be late. We sat on the floor in the bullet train area since there was no where to sit in the waiting room, and waited about an hour until it was time for our train.

Our train came and we put our luggage behind our seats. The green car was fairly quiet, except for when people walked through to get to other cars, and this kid who kept running up and down the aisles screaming. Parents didn't seem to care, as per usual. The first class service was that we got a wet wipe - that's it. The train went pretty fast and we were in Tokyo in under 2 hours. We took one more train to Akihabara where we were staying our last night and found our hotel right next to the train station. Akihabara was closest to the airport and the location by the train station was perfect, so it was a great choice. The hotel was very modern and everyone was nice. The room was teeny - barely room for our luggage. We went downstairs to walk around Akihabara a bit and get dinner. I wanted to try out ramen and we found a great little ramen place. For under $10, this was probably one of our best meals of the trip. There are pictures of each dish outside the store (as well as English) and we picked two. You put your money into a machine outside the door and it spits out a ticket. Then you take the ticket and give it to the chef and pick your noodle type and if you want it hot or cold. I picked udon, which are the really fat, doughy ones. Dave also picked that, but they messed up and gave us the skinnier ones. It worked out fine because Dave like those more, so it was perfect.

Most of the stores were closed by now, but we went to the Don Quixote, which is kind of their version of a Walmart. We bought a few things (Dave got his Halloween costume for this year) and went back to the hotel.