Onwards to Kyoto

We woke up this morning to a thick blanket of snow over Yudanaka, and snow continued to pour down all morning. According to our host it would snow all over Japan today, and there may even be train delays! The snow was so thick that a 1 minute walk to the supermarket turned into an epic.

We managed to get ferried down to Yudanaka station, and then caught four trains to get to our accommodation in Kyoto. The first was the NagaDen line to Nagano, then we activated our Japan Railway pass and got ourselves a Shinkansen ticket. We decided to take the northern route, via Kanazawa, thinking that it might be quite scenic. It turns out that a blizzard viewed from the Shinkansen is just a white blur, and not so exciting!

From Kanazawa, we changed to another train for Kyoto (a Limited Express, so not as fast as the Shinkansen, but still twice as fast as Australian trains!). We had a brief respite from the snow along the coast, but on our way through to Lake Biwa we encountered some pretty deep snow, which the train would plough through. Nonetheless, this train was late ... about 10 minutes over two hours. But at least we did have some nice scenery on this one.

Finally, we took a local train through Kyoto to our apartment for the week. It is small, but pretty cute -- the girls have a loft to sleep in and we have a small bedroom as the main room. We are in a nice little district, with small laneways, a covered street nearby and an over abundance of hairdressing salons. A good base to explore Kyoto over the next week.