Cute attraction tickets, with a bus day pass; one of the ways of getting around Kyoto if you can figure out the system
Kyoto doesn’t lack for public transport (although it apparently falls short of other Japanese cities), and most of the options are accessible from the central train station. As we were based in a hotel that sat on top of the station, moving around the city should have been easy…
First, let’s eliminate one option: taxis. Don’t bother unless you have a fat wallet. They are clean, the drivers are polite and careful; but the meter has a problem keeping up with the rapidly mounting charge. We used them once when we were completely lost and I spent the equivalent of 700 baht in about twenty minutes; ouch.
Most places you might want to visit are within walking distance of public transport. In fact in many cases you have a choice. Will be it be one of the two subway networks? One of the many rail company lines? Or perhaps a bus?
Buses offer the most options, let’s just pick the best route from this simplified map:
And yes, it is in English…
In the unlikely event you can work out which route to take, you then have the challenge of finding the bus stop. Once in the correct queue, you hop on the bus and wait until your stop is announced, hopefully in English. Then you move to the front of the bus to exit, dropping the correct fare into a machine. This is a fixed prices within certain city limits, although the actual limits are an undefined mystery. Best be safe and purchase a day pass which you drop into another machine and it hopefully spits it out again for you. Having visited your attraction of choice, you then have the challenge of finding the bus stop that will take you back to the city centre. This is often in a completely different street from the bus stop which you arrived at; not that you can remember where that is either. Our strategy was to follow knots of locals heading out of the attraction who looked like they might be heading for a bus stop. Identifying such people correctly is as difficult as you might imagine.
The worst part about buses, apart from not being able to work out which one to take, not knowing the correct fare, getting off at the wrong stop and not finding your way back again; is that they can sit in city traffic for a long time, especially during a busy weekend. We only used them twice.
The subway is probably the easiest option. Consult the map which sometimes has English annotations and sometimes does not, and work out how to get where you want to go and how much it will cost you. You then approach a bank of machines of differing colours and slightly different lettering. We never discovered whether the different colours meant anything significant; every ticket we coerced out of every machine was accepted by the guardian gates next to the platforms. You place the appropriate fare, or more, into the machine and enter into a dance of button pushing until your ticket is disgorged. She who must be obeyed became thoroughly stuck at one machine and in desperation pressed a button that was covered by a sliding plastic flap. Within seconds, a panel next to the machine slid open and a man in a cap stuck his head out, ready to render assistance. Now that’s service!
Once on the subway, it’s pretty straightforward; and one morning it was just pretty. I couldn’t help but notice that I was the only man in a carriage full of Japanese babes (and the very lovely she who must be obeyed of course). And they seemed to be quite interested in my European hunkiness. How very pleasing, I thought, as my eyes roamed around the carriage at the assembled cuteness, before settling on a big pink sign on the door which said “women only”. This was matched by a even bigger sign with the same message on the floor of the next station outside the doors. As I was a tourist, I was given bemused rather than angry stares and we made a dignified exit as soon as possible.
The good thing about the subway is that they stop at every station; which is more than you can say for the bloody trains. We were caught out twice by climbing onto an “express” rather than a “local” service; and then sat helplessly as our train thundered through the station of our choice. When it became clear that our fellow Japanese travellers were as confused as we were; I always made a point of finding a man with a railway hat to confirm that the train was actually going to bother stopping at our station.
If this sounds a little confusing, well perhaps it was initially; but we soon learned the basics; the first rule of which was “if you are lost, ask the Japanese”. They were unfailingly helpful and polite and would muster back-up from passers-by if they didn’t know the answer; or didn’t understand the question. As a result, navigating the many delights of the Kyoto public transport system was a load more fun than I thought it would be.
Comments 🔗
2013-10-07| Andrew saysI have had the experience of of a Japanese guy getting on the train with me to ride 30 min. to make sure I got off at the right stop and then when we arrived taking another train back to the station we were at to go off to where he was originally going ( in the opposite direction )…nobody should be afraid to travel in Japan…and you just might have an interesting experience as you try…it is actually quite difficult to not have a good time in Japan…whether for visiting or living…and knowing a bit of the language or writing systems will enhance that even more….