Needing breakfast we did what we do best and went to the Train station. The traditional japanease breaky came with a soft runny egg... how does one eat this with chopsticks? Adding rice was definitely not the right option. We headed off to see the Bamboo forest in arashiyama then two temples one looked old (jojakuko-ji) the other was (hogonin). I really enjoyed the older feel of a slightly neglected temple , it felt more real with a sense of age and dignity. Plus it was a photographers dream full of contrast in terms of light colour and feel.
This wore us out a bit and we needed a good feed. It seems the portions in japan are smaller which tends to leave us a little hungry. To combat this woods tried to order two meals. This caused a lot of confusion.... 4meals for 3 people this is unheard of. The cook had to come out and double check again 4 meals? Hai. For the three of you? Hai! So des. Then the manager came, we have run out of chicken.... fine we will have 3 meals. I feel we may have transgressed some unspoken rule in japan, two meals at one is a bridge too far.
We went to appreciate the local bridge as we read that it could be appreciated in may ways and from many places. My comment was that perhaps squinting from as far away as possible would be best - this was not well received. The bridge of many reflections duly contemplated we set off for our train to nowhere. Well actually fujiyoshida (according to Google).
At this point i feel i need to address my flawless(ish) navigation of japan, which has been a source or rye humor and (undeserved) criticism from my fellow travelers. So Google told me 5hours including bullet trains. As the rail pass does not cover all trains I switched to a Japanese/English site to fujiyamashida , directions: bullet to tokyo the back south-west-ish connects to a local train... looks good. So I reserve seats on the train leaving in 10min at the desk. his English is limited but i show him my phone and he helpfully organises our journey. So we go to the right platform a bullet train arrives and we take our assigned seats. The awesome train pulls out of the station building up speed to about 250km/hr we plug into chargers get comfortable and relax.
Slight problem, wrong train. This is the one our pass is not valid for, as the conductor apologetically tells us. No bigie the right train is seven minutes behind us and we can change at the next station 100km on. This comes just after my realization that fujiyamasida and fujiyoshida are not the same place, so the other tickets are worthless. Well... at this point haters be hating and it is had to explain that my original directions are still right and I know how to get to fujiyamathingo which is actually called Kawaguchico. We got there. I was right, i was nit believed. By this time no where is open for food so we raided the Lawson (convenience store) for an assortment of crazy things.
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