Taking Japan’s Bullet Train from Kyoto to Nagoya 🇯🇵
Good morning folks from a very damp Kyoto. This morning we’re going to be going to Nagoya and we’re going to be taking a charming Japanese train as we always do. Probably along the line that’s literally just up here that was keeping me awake last night. Not really. I had ear plugs. But if you didn’t, you definitely wouldn’t sleep in this place. The whole building would shake when the planes go over. This is where I stayed last night. I’ll give you a little quick look over there. I had a whole house to myself. It’s a little Japanese house. How charming is that? Tammy mats on the floor and everything. Lovely. Uh, but not as nice as a place I think we’ll be staying in N. I’ve got a really nice treat for you there. I’ll give you a house tour for that one cuz we’ve got a really nice quintessentially Japanese home we’re staying in. Yeah. Still quite a charming little street nonetheless. Oh, there’s a pigeon. Hello. You won’t speak English, really, guys? Come on. It’s a Japanese pigeon. Right, let’s get ourselves to Kyoto station. It’s not far from here. It’s about a 10-minute walk. And our train leaves, I think, at 8 minutes past 9 or just past 9:00. Not too bad. So, we got time to get there. So, the train we’ll be taking is called the Hikari 500. So, we’ve taken the Sakura. We’ve taken the Thunderbird yesterday. That was cool. That wasn’t a bullet train. I think the Hakkari 500 is a Shinkanzen, but I’m not sure. And that’s kind of uh part of the fun. You turn up, you don’t really don’t really know what you’re getting on. I could Google it, but where’s the fun in that? Let’s just turn up and we’ll see what train we’re getting on. I assume you’ll have already seen cuz I usually put it in the thumbnail. I do my stereotypical in front of the train, but that’s because I like to make sure that my thumbnails are actually from the video. Nothing worse than clicking on a video and the thumbnail has nothing to do with it. My thumbnails are a direct screenshot from my videos 99% of the time. Yeah, Kyoto’s been okay. I can’t say I can’t give it a very good review or a bad review because I didn’t get a chance to do a lot when I was here because the weather had been so atrocious. It was raining so hard that even with an umbrella like people weren’t going out you could see everyone was just kind of staying to the side. It rained pretty much all day yesterday. I did get a chance to go to a pretty cool temple which you’ll have seen if you follow me on Instagram so I post stories on there and I keep things up to date. So, these videos sometimes come out weeks after I shot them just because of how long they take to edit. And obviously, I’ve got a pipeline of videos to come out first. So, if you ever want to see what I’m up to dayto-day, Instagram’s your best bet. They must be serving up something pretty good. Quite a queue there for breakfast. Well, here’s the station. And a big station it is. Let’s get inside cuz it looks quite interesting on the inside. Quite a modern design, I suppose, which I’m not, you know me, I’m not the biggest fan of modern architecture, but it’s still interesting nonetheless. So, let’s take a look. Yeah. Straight up. Hey guys. So, it’s a massive station. I don’t know how well it’ll show on camera. It never really does, but the height of the place is insane. It’s crazy tall. Let’s see if we can find ourselves on the board. We’re looking for the 908 500 to Nagoya. Where it final destination, I don’t know, but we’re going to Nagoya. So the 9008 kari 5009. Oh, there we are for Nagoya/ Tokyo. You can see just there. That’s the 908. We’re on track 11. Right, let’s get through and get to track 11. Right, track 11. Where are you? Right, I’ll get a bit closer for you guys so you can see actually. So, here 500 9008 track 11. I can actually read the hiragana for that one. I’m quite happy with myself. Higana for the hikari track 11 straight down here. There we are. Shinkansen 11 to 14. There’s restaurants and things in here as well still. So, you’re spoiled for choice. In these stations, which are usually huge here in Japan, there’s always a multitude of places to eat, drink, calfs, restaurants, and you’ve always got your comini, the convenience stores here. We went a little too far. We just need to go up these escalators here to platform 11 to 14. Get ourselves a drink. I’m a little bit thirsty. There’ll always be a convenient up there or a vending machine. There’s always a vending machine. Let’s just take the stairs. It’ll be easier cuz that’s quite the queue. So down there guys on that track that’s where we came in yesterday on the Thunderbird 13 which is not a shin canen but it was still quite a rapid train just this upper part of the Shinkan station is bigger than a lot of stations back home. Right 11 to 14. Keep going this way. Although it can be quite a trick to get to where you need to go in these stations, so it’s always good to give yourself plenty of time. They’re all very well laid out and signposted. Right. Shinkansen 14 to 11 down here. Right. Track 11 12 up here. But as you can see, it’s like we’re in another station again. And there’s plenty of shops and places and stuff to get. And yeah, spoiled for choice. I’ve just got over 15 minutes, so we’ll have a little peruse. See if there’s anything worth getting. I see a lot of matcha here. I think Kyoto’s known for their matcha. I personally don’t like matcha. I think it tastes like grass and fish, but that’s just me. And yes, guys, I’ve had ceremonial grade matcha, yada yada. It just does nothing for us. It’s just not my cup of tea. I got a Starbucks in here. I am seeing plenty options for food here like eky bends and things like that. But to be fair, it’s only like a 35minut train ride for me to go from here. So I’m not that hungry. So I probably won’t pick anything up. But I’m a bit thirsty. So we’ll get a drink. But suppose it’s going to be easier to just use one of these vendor machines. What we got here? We got Pepsi Cola. You very rarely see it with a cola on it. And we’ve got some lemon stuff. This I have no idea what this is. So, let’s get one. It’s always good to try new things. So, that’s 170. And I should probably have the right amount. So, 170. Let’s get some lemon stuff. premium lemon swap. I assume it’s just going to be like a nice lemonade. We’ll see. All right, let’s go to our platform just up here. I don’t know what it is, guys, but Japan makes me sweat like nowhere else. I think it’s just the humidity. It’s so humid. I don’t think I sweated this much in uh Mumbai. And it was hotter there, but it wasn’t. And it was still humid. But I’m dripping here. So, we got a little fresh air up here, but not much. So, you can see the tracks here. Got barriers along here on this one. And there’s automatic barriers that open. And there’s some coffee stands and probably a little comini down there at the bottom. I can’t see. So, a combini at the bottom there that I can’t quite see. We’ve got coffee stands all the way along here. Spoils. Poor choice. Here we are, guys. Car nine and as always plenty vending machines and a perk coffee which has sandwiches. They love deep fried food here. I must say they always have like deep fried uh like cutlets inside sandwiches even when they’re cold. I’m not a huge deep fried food guy myself which might come as a shock with my stature in my build. But I like a good piece of fried chicken, don’t get us wrong, but I’m not a big fan of it cold in the sandwiches. They do. Yeah, the sandwiches here are a bit of a oddity in my opinion. And they hate crusts. You’ll never get a sandwich with crusts. Shall we try our lemonade drink? It tastes exactly like Fanta ice lemon. Like exactly. So yes, it’s good. [Music] Very nice trail indeed. Eh. Looks very similar to one we’ve been on before, like the Sakura. I don’t know if there isn’t much of a difference, but uh we’ll have a look. Looks a bit It looks very squared off. A bit more squared off, but I might be wrong. It might be the exact same model. This is interesting. I haven’t seen that before. This four-way configuration is really good for that. There we are. drink on the window sill. Habit is right. So chairs are slightly different. I can tell compared to the Sakura. So the footrest here is much larger and just different in general. There’s a little pedal here. So you can adjust the angle of it. So that’s cool. net instead of a little flap that we had before. It’s under the tray table. Pretty much the same. So, it lights forward, but again, huge. Good if you want to do some work. Bit of a design here. Close hook as normal. Little air vent there, which is good. Air coming out of that as well. It’s nice and cool here, which is good. Um, we Right. So, there is a difference. Normally, there’s two rockers here. one for a little footrest that comes out the bottom. But this doesn’t have these. It has these extended footrests, but this should still recline all the same square here instead of a circle. We still have our light and something there. I’m not sure what that is, but seat warmer. Definitely don’t want that. In here we have another trade table as usual. Little one for your drink. So I can put my delightful premium lemon squash on there. How good is that? Window blinds as normal. Slightly different design perhaps. Yeah. So only a short one today guys. About 35 minutes which is one of our shorter Shikansen journeys on this trip. Our longest is going to be from Saporo down to Tokyo. That’s well over 8 hours I believe. Right. I think there’s not much more to show you. I’ll show you the toilets in a minute when I go there. But at the minute, uh, yeah, pretty good. Everything’s on time as per I mean, it goes without saying. I sound like a broken record. Right, folks. It is now 9:08 and we’re still in the station. We haven’t left yet, but we’ll see. I’ve never had one of these leave not on the minute yet. Right, guys, we’re off. It’s literally just gone 9:09. So yes, we’ve left bang on time as usual. And we can see how smooth the journey is with my lemoners and how little it’s moving. [Music] I mean, that’s pretty steady, guys. [Music] in front of you. If you have any questions, please Here’s something you guys. I’ve just been given what looks like a moist towel or a moist towelettes, however you wish to describe. Good. But let’s go in the lava tree and see what that situation’s like. Right, folks. We’re in the lavatory. And a spacious one it is. I must say this is the biggest one yet. Look at the floor space. There’s the toilet bowl. There’s the sink. We some toilet paper flush. We got the spray. We got the bedet. We got the seat open and close. I’ve seen the close. I’ve never seen the open. Let’s give this one a go. Isn’t that fancy? I like that a lot. There’s also a call for help. So, if you fall in the toilet and you get stuck, you can ask for assistance. Right, I’m going to do my business and get out of here. Actually, here’s what it looks like from the corner, guys. Up at the top, you can see how large it is. Yeah, really big and a nice big mirror. So, that’s the toilet there. And as always, there’s the um the men’s, that’s just a urinal. There’s the women’s, that’s a normal toilet. I won’t go in there, obviously. And if you want to wash your hands with soap, you need to come outside. There’s another little separate area with a sink. The sinks inside. The toilets do not have soap. Now, this train has something I’ve never seen before on one of the Shinkansen, and it’s a luggage area where you can put your larger luggage, and you can lock it in place. So, if you have an IC card, you can use your IC card to unlock it and then lock it again. And there’s also one here that’s just open to anyone without a reservation. You can just uh I don’t know if there’s a way to to use a combination lock on this. No, I don’t see a way for you to do it without that. But if you have the card, which I don’t have, but I but you can pick them up fairly easily, you can then um lock your luggage there. So that’s really handy. So we’ve made it to Nagoya. Looks like we’re the only one getting off from our carriage. Nobody else seem to be getting off. I think this train’s going all the way to Tokyo perhaps. So it’s always where they’re getting off. And it’s raining. charming. Well, guys, it’s 9:42 and we’re not on the platform yet. So, we are technically late. That’s a first. We were meant to get here at 9:42 and it is now Oh, we were meant to get here at 9:42 and it is now 9:42, but we’re not on the platform yet, guys. So, we are technically late and that’s a first for me here. [Music] Well, guys, we were going to get here at 9:42. It’s now 9:45. So, we’re 3 minutes late. So, the Shinkansen is not perfect, but it’s pretty damn close, right guys? Let’s get to get the view of the front of our train, but there’s no chance we’re going to get there in time this time. Long train right in the middle, right guys? Anyway, but I have to probably get the thumbnail here. Right guys, hope you’ve enjoyed that video. If you want to see more Shinkansen videos, I got plenty on the channel. I’ve got taking commuter lines here in Japan. I’ve got taking the Thunderbird train, which in my opinion looks a little bit like a 747 with its elevated cockpit at the front. We’ve got metro lines, we’ve got the lock, guys. If that’s what you’re interested in, stick around and I’ll catch you on the next one. Bye.
Today I’m taking Japan’s famous bullet train — the Shinkansen — from Kyoto to Nagoya, and as always, it’s unbelievably smooth, clean, and fast. 🇯🇵🚄
I go through Kyoto Station, board the Shinkansen, show the inside of the train, check the seats, and take you along for the full ride to Nagoya. Even on a short journey, Japan’s rail system feels years ahead of the rest of the world.
🚄 Route: Kyoto → Nagoya
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