I think I was destined to feel short-changed at Sumiyoshi ryokan.

Yesterday at breakfast I had the western style breakfast, which was honestly ordinary, while the Japanese breakfast of hoba miso on rice with the side dishes looked fantastic. As a result I changed my breakfast order to a Japanese style breakfast, and was very much looking forward to my delicious hoba miso.

Everyone but me thought it was very funny when they'd changed the menu for the second day, and instead of hoba miso, the lady preparing our breakfast, who I'd never seen before, fired up the grill, and started putting lumps of brown something onto the grill to warm through.
Apparently it was some kind of already-cooked tofu, which she was re-warming for me. Then taking my chopsticks out of my hand, she starts to smear the reheating tofu lumps with minced daikon radish. The only way to make this tofu worse would be to slather it it daikon.

Then, looking very proud of her efforts she hands the chopsticks back to me, sits and looks at me, expectantly. Fantastic.

I'm glad she didn't understand English when I said "You're seriously going to sit there until I eat this, aren't you?", albeit with a smile on my face. So I took the horrible warm tofu with the horrible cold daikon sludge, and ate a piece. It is impossible to look like you are enjoying something this bad, and I must not have hid my disgust real well because my girls couldn't control their laughter, and she didn't ask me to try another piece.

So, miso-less, I picked through the pickled and mummified things on my plate, and ate some of the omeletes that Angela and Isabelle didn't want from their breakfast, and with that, headed upstairs to pack.

Takayama, being in the middle of nowhere, doesn't get regular trains. To get to Kyoto we had the option of a 9:30am train, or an 11:30am train. Not wanting to spend 2 more hours killing time in Takayama, we rushed to get our bags down to checkout.

On checking out I saw the male owner of the ryokan for only the second time of the stay. I'm sure he does something around the place, but whatever it is, I didn't see it. This time he handed me the itemised bill, and has charged me extra for the breakfasts. I'm almost certain that both dinners and breakfasts were included in the nightly rate he quoted me, but when I queried the price he suddenly lost all English comprehension skills, and without the original email containing the pricing quote at my disposal, it was a futile exercise. So I just payed the bill, and less than happy, left there vowing never to return. Maybe I misunderstood, and breakfasts were extra, but at the moment I think I've been short changed yet again by this stupid ryokan, this time to the tune of around $80. I'll check the details when I get home, and if I'm right I'll chase it up then.

Entering the train station we met up with a guy from Melbourne who we've been running into over the last couple of days. He left Nagano with us, and caught all the same trains to Takayama, and he was again catching the same trains to Kyoto.

After a fairly easy and comfortable few hours on the Takayama local train to Nagoya we got off, and the poor guy we were with could not find his rail pass. Since he was going to be in Japan for another week, this could be a costly loss for him, so we helped him look for it before the train pulled away, and since he spoke no Japanese Veronica helped him explain the situation to the train conductors and cleaners.

But no luck, he couldn't find it anywhere. Without much more we could do, he thanked us and said we were fine to go ahead. There was originally 10 minutes to get to the connecting train to Kyoto, however with the 5 minutes spent helping the guy from Melbourne, this became a lot tighter.

We found the platform, and running up the 3 flights of stairs with all of the luggage we heard the train, either pulling in, or pulling away. Luckily for us it was just pulling in, so we rushed to jump into whatever carriage we could find, since we didn't have time to get seat reservations. It turns out that we were at the wrong end of the train, and in between the green class cars (first class cars) and the reserved normal class cars. Since the trip from Nagoya to Kyoto was only 45 minutes, we decided to just deal with the pain of standing for the journey, but it did feel a little weird standing near the toilets of a shinkansen carriage with all of our luggage and 3 kids while everyone else reclined comfortably in their reserved seats.

But we made it to Kyoto, and things started feeling familiar again. By now we know Kyoto station like the back of our hand, but that didn't prevent us from stopping at a cafe that served the worst coffee on earth. It was simply awful. Right next door was a Mr. Donut, and no prizes for guessing what he sells, so a purchase from him made the really bad coffee experience a little bit easier to take.

After a quick stop at the Kyoto tourism booth to grab bus maps and timetables, we went down onto the street to find the bus we needed. We knew which bus numbers we needed, so we found the bus stop which was next to arrive, and waited.

At this point, my man-flu which has been building for a few days has hit full strength, and I can no longer see, speak or think straight. With a pounding headache my semi-conscious mind was like a passenger in my own body, and my body was just a utility to transport luggage at that point in time, so I just wanted to get to the apartment for a hot shower and a rest.

Imagine my happiness when the bus took off in the exact opposite direction to what we needed to go in. Examining the bus map again, Veronica found that although we were on the correctly numbered bus, there is actually 2 bus runs with the same number. This to me seems really stupid, but it is apparently the way it is.
We needed the 206 bus. We caught the 206 bus from Kyoto station, which immediately headed north west, and apparently would go as far as the bus terminal to the north of Kyoto. At that time we'd have to get off and catch the other 206 bus, which would take us anticlockwise around the outskirts of Kyoto, and eventually end up at our apartment, in the east of the city.

Frustrated by this, we noticed that there is a subway line running west to east across the middle of the city, which pulls up meters from our apartment. So we got off the bus stop at Nijo Castle, transferred to the subway line, and 5 painless subway stops later, we were at the apartment.

We found the apartment, and were a little early, but the girl working reception was fantastic. In minutes she had us checked in, and walked us through the features of the apartment, as well as giving us maps of the surrounding area including restaurants, points of interest, etc.

I have to say that out of all of our stays in Japan, this apartment is the best we've stayed in. It is a little out of the way, in the Gion area of Kyoto, but still within 15 minutes walk of the major shopping streets, and there are buses and a subway station at the door. And the apartment is fantastic. So much more than just a hotel room, it has a loft with a double bed, full kitchen and laundry facilities, a sofa bed, and and actual tables and beds raised up so we don't have to do stuff on the floor anymore.

I showered and slept, while Veronica took the girls for a walk in the afternoon. When she returned, and I was feeling well enough, we got dressed to go out and grab some dinner.

Not wanting anything fancy or difficult, we settled for our old favorite Coco curry for, surprisingly, only the second time this trip.
Coco curry has a scale of spice levels, with 10 being the hottest. I have a ritual of ordering one number 10 dish per trip, and considering my nose was blocked and my senses blunted with the man-flu, tonight was the best time to go for it. If nothing else it was going to clear out the sinuses.

In the past, I've not had any problems with the number 10 curry from Coco. Yes it is hot, but I don't remember it ever being as hot as it was tonight. Either their number 10 curry has got hotter since I had it last, or my tolerance for searingly hot spicy food has gone down, because tonight it was insanely hot. I'm told that after the first 5 minutes my face went red, and my eyes went bloodshot. Tears ran down my cheeks like a little girl, and I'm sure the other patrons in the restaurant wondered what my problem was, as they sat there eating their number 3 spice level curries. For the second time today, my meal was funny for everyone at the table except me.

For the first time in my life I couldn't finish a Coco curry dish. I must really be sick.

Tomorrow's agenda has nothing planned. There are lots of things we would like to revisit in Kyoto, and as we're in Gion we're actually within walking distance of quite a few of them.