36 Hours in Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan

James and Elisa had sorted us a 7 day JR rail pass, via STA Travel which we had been using on some of the lines around Tokyo and it would also allow us to travel on the trains down to Kyoto and beyond. The passes are only available for tourists and you get a voucher which you need to exchange in person at the station along with your passport to get the actual pass to use. The cost was JPY29,110 or about NZD$377 per person for a 7 consecutive day pass.

There are a couple of different rail networks in Tokyo, so we used a combination of our rail pass and purchasing extra tickets for other subway lines when we needed them.

You can also reserve seats on your pass for the Shinkansen for free, but we were told that the reserved seating on the day we wanted to travel to Kyoto was all full. This was a bit concerning, but on the day it all worked out fine as there are also a number of carriages for people with non reserved tickets. We lined up and jumped on a train that stopped at more stations too a the direct train looked really crowded. There are trains leaving about every 20 minutes. We got up to about 270km/hr! So it only took a couple of hours to get to Kyoto. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).