34. Our wonderful room at the Roku Kyoto LXR

greeted with tea at check in

At check in to our two nights at the fancy Roku Kyoto LXR hotel (free thanks to my Amex Aspire cards) we were able to get an upgrade to a room with private onsen. To say the room exceeded expectations is a gross understatement. There were two bathroom sink areas, one on each side of the shower. The onsen tub was next to one of the sink areas. It overlooked a private small garden. There was also a little dining table. The beds were comfy and the separate toilet area had it's own sink and a bidet that opened it's lid when you walked in.

bathroom and shower

bedroom at Roku Kyoto

night view at Roku Kyoto

Our private onsen and garden

the mini bar with free chocolates

There was also a walk in closet area and a mini bar area. As a diamond member they gave us free sodas, chips, and chocolate. The sodas were just coke and coke zero but the chocolates were outstanding: a Cadbury bar and a bag of those brookstone chocolate covered blueberries and acai berries. I stopped buying those at Costco because I'll eat the whole giant Costco bag in a few days. These were smaller but still a very solid size. I heart my hilton aspire card!

Breakfast at Roku Kyoto

Breakfast the next morning was also included as a diamond member. They had a decent half buffet. I’m not sure what that means but I guess it’s sides and salads without the “main” dishes. Anyways, they had a couple really good salads, good bread, fruit, and fresh squeezed juice. We also got to select a main dish to go with it. I got the Japanese set and Julia picked an omelet. I don’t like fish for breakfast and so mine was a poor choice though I still had plenty of good things I like for breakfast. Julia’s sausage was interesting as they wrapped it around a bone so you could hold it by the bone and eat it.

Julia at breakfast

breakfast buffet part

sausage is cooked on a bone for easy eating

fresh juice at buffet

breakfast buffet

Roku Kyoto grounds

After breakfast we explored the grounds with beautiful pools, the relaxing Japanese garden next door, and did some more shopping damage as a gift shop. We left Kyoto with much more stuff than we came with. Not the plan. We will see how we will manage getting to Hilton Tokyo Bay once we add in the luggage we left at our hotel in Shinjuku.

Koi fish pond in Japanese garden

Japanese garden

Little gift shop where we went a little crazy

Pools at the Roku Kyoto LXR

they straightened up my toiletries

The Roku Kyoto is a very high service hotel. When we came back from breakfast they had straightened our room. The usual clutter of items I kept by the bathroom sink was placed neatly on a towel. The clutter of items by my bed was also straightened and my charging cable was folded up and secured with a new velcro strap! Crazy! Nothing was done about the underwear we laid out to dry in the sun. I think they must have been so shocked they didn't know what to do with that!

they straightened my bedside table
and put a Velcro on my cables

drying out our still damp clothes from the Hyatt

Golden pavilion

We went to the Golden Pavillion down the hill. The problem is we know we have to come back up that hill later but we still did it. The Golden Pavillion was gorgeous (see pics). After walked to Hiroko Shrine which our server had suggested as a great place to see cherry blossoms. During the season they set up a little fair of sorts where you pay an admission to the cherry blossom area next to the shrine. There are tons of beautiful cherry blossom trees and also food trucks. We split a pork rice dish, which was quite good. Luckily the walk back up hill not as bad as we thought it would be.

wishing well at Golden pavilion

Cherry blossoms at Hiroko Shrine

lunch from a food booth at hiroko shrine

Cherry blossoms near Hirolo Shrine

watching TV from the onsen using a mirror

Once home I started up the mineral water tub and turned on TV. They had ice dancing championships so by the time the tub had filled I was hooked and had to choose between watching the competition and getting my mineral pool soak. The bathroom had a large mirror on a stand and with careful placement I was able to watch the skating. It might have been backwards but at least not upside-down like the convex mirror side showed. At first I thought it might be a regional competition because they were good but not as good as I remember from the Olympics. However, there were 32 couple competing and Japan shows all of them! I think we came in around the 7th couple. The weakest teams go first, which is nice since they have a chance to be in the top 3 at some point.

room service is ordered through the TV

Needless to say it's a good thing dinner was available until 10pm because the competition ended at 8:00 and you order room service through the TV. The American team, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, was flawless and amazing taking the lead for the rhythm dance. The second part, the free style, will be tomorrow though I think it may be a rerun. As soon the last group had skated, we ordered: Bento box with beef, lamb ragout pasta, and a fruit plate. It was all delicious!

room service

dinner at Roku Kyoto

Julia and I thought through our plan for the next day. My original plan included taking several trains and buses to get to see the snow monkeys in hot springs but what google maps said was 3hr 45 min to get there and 4hr to get to Tokyo was actually closer to 5.5 hrs each way according to the more reliable Navitime app for Japan. 11 hours of travel just to spend 30 minutes looking at the monkeys (we would have to leave early enough to get to Tokyo at a reasonable time) seemed a little crazy especially since we had just seen super cute monkeys at Arashiyama a couple days ago. This simplified things quite a bit and we were able to catch a bullet train from Kyoto to Tokyo that only took a couple hours leaving us extra time to shop!

my modified duffel/back pack

The next morning we had a great breakfast and headed out around 11:30 to catch the 12:45 bullet train. We will miss the Roku Kyoto LXR with their amazing service, beautiful grounds, super cool room, and delicious food. Our host Mr. Futamata ordered us a taxi and 6 minutes later we were on our way to the subway. I figured out how to rig one of the small crappy carabiners from my water bottle where it could hold the two straps of the duffle bag together so I could wear it like a backpack without pulling on my shoulders too much. We took the local subway to Kyoto Station then had 26 minutes to find where to buy the Nozomi bullet train tickets and board the train. It’s a good thing we are now old pros at using the train system. A quick google search told us that the Nozomi is part of the JR Shinkansen line which is their bullet trains. After a few minutes following signs we got to two ticket machines but there were 8 people in line in front of us! If we missed this train the next was an hour later.

using a carabiner to keep the bag handles together

They had signs saying 9 more machines in 120m so Julia held our place in line while I walked over to check those out. There were open machines so I called her to come meet me and proceeded to buy the tickets. For some reason we could not get the 4960 yen ($33) price the Navitime app showed. Instead it was an eye popping $91 each. Upon later research it seems the 4960 is the surcharge if you already have a JR pass which we did not. At any rate, we made it to the train platform with plenty of time to be first in line, which is important since we did not spend the extra $20 for reserved seats so we had to go in the “unreserved car” and hope to get seats. We got the only pair of open seats together on our car and soon we were rushing across the countryside. I took the time to try to finish checking all my entries for the estate accounting to close up my friend Jesse’s probate.

storing our luggage in lockers in Shinjuku Station

The trip went by in no time. The transfer at Shinagawa to Shinjuku went relatively smoothly. Once there we found an open locker to store our stuff for the next few hours. We went shopping at Hands where I bought some Ghibli and Pokemon gifts, some cute Japanese erasers, and some stationary. We bought a couple more cards from the cute stationary store we went to before, then headed to Shibuya to see the Shibuya Shuffle Crossing. This is a street crossing with another street coming in and it is famous for being the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. It lies right outside of Shibuya Station. It was fun to cross diagonally across the street with people walking in all directions. Though we missed the absolute rush hour it was still pretty close.

the Shibuya Shuffle

Squashed into the subway train in Tokyo.

Heading back to Shinjuku we experienced the fabled Tokyo rush hour where people are crammed into a subway train. There was no need for me to hold onto a rung as I was tightly wedged between people and had no chance of falling down. From there we tried to find another good sushi place. Unfortunately they were all too far away or crazy expensive so we went to a cheap hole in the wall near our old hotel in Shinjuku. It was the kind with a little conveyer belt that went around with dishes of sushi on it and you take the ones you want. It was decent and about half the price of the last one in Kyoto (which was about half of the first night). It was certainly a lower quality but about what I have in Pleasanton (i.e. very average) but it hit the spot. There was actually one dish that I really liked and I could eat those all day.

decent sushi place with conveyor belt

Julia gamely carrying all our souvenirs along with her luggage

We got our luggage at JR Blossom and then went to our locker in Shinjuku Station and little a quick repack before setting off to Hilton Tokyo Bay. We briefly considered taking a taxi until we learned it was $85. We only had 2 transfers so it wasn’t too difficult. Julia was a trooper herding her suitcase with our joint duffle bag of souvenirs balanced on top. By the third escalator she was a pro getting everything on and off while still allowing traffic to pass on the right. The last transfer was to the Disney Resort Gateway station which is just a small 4 station monorail that goes from Maihama Station on the JR line to DisneySea, the Disney related hotels (including ours), and DisneyLand.

with all our stuff on the train to Disneyland