Today we met up with one of Matt's friends, Dylan, who we stayed with last time we were here. He lives 3 hours away so we decided to meet half way, which was Kyoto. It dawned grey and rainy this morning, so we decided to go to a steam train museum as it was under cover. Kyoto of course is famous for temples and shrines but can you really take a shrieking 3 year old to a place of prayer? Also can you imagine taking him to a zen rock garden? His eyes would light up at the sight of all the stones, he would be straight in there collecting them, rearranging them and generally being a menace.
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| The Round House - the best engine shed I've ever seen |
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| Operating the whistle |
So Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum it was. Problem we had was that of course we went to the best train museum ever earlier this week, so this was never going to live up to it. However they had an impressive range of trains in a fantastic round house with the biggest turntable I have ever seen. That in itself was was worth the visit. They also had a miniature railway - although modelled on a shinkansen rather than a steam train. Tom and Matt had a ride on that. There were also toy trains and tracks to play with, but this museum being much older - most of the trains were broken - Tom didn't seem to mind though spending a good half hour with them. In the museum proper they had a driver's cab with a working whistle and a lever that made a chug chug noise when you squeezed it - Tom enjoyed that very much. Oh and at last we found a Shinkansen t-shirt for Tom which wasn't overpriced and it has all his favourite trains on it: white train, blue train, rail star and of course Dr Yellow.
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| Tom and a steam engine |
We had a bento box each for lunch (seems to be the routine at the moment) and then went for a 10 minute ride up and down the railway tracks in a steam train. The museum is located within walking distance of Kyoto Station so you could actually see every type of train from the museum: shinkansens, thunderbirds, local trains & the airport express - a train spotters heaven.
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| Three boys and a ball |
After a last play on the trains we left and walked to a nearby park that we saw from the train. It was a huge park by Japanese standards and it had stopped raining so we played football. Tom was in good form and exercised us all. We had a sit down to watch the trains including the steam train and then we played a bit more football. The park was directly in front of the new aquarium in Kyoto which has a dolphin show taking place on the park side so we got to see some jumping dolphins as well which was a bonus.
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| Hanging out in the park |
We then walked back to the station, had a drink and cake in a cafe before saying goodbye to Dylan and heading back home. Tom fell asleep on me on the way home - he did play a lot of football. When we got to Aioi, we were greeted with blue sky and sunshine - so maybe rainy season isn't quite upon us yet, although it was raining hard in Kyoto when we left. Then a home cooked dinner - chicken with stuff on it, nira (Japanese vegetable - translated in Matt's dictionary as garlic chives which is near enough but imagine giant sized chives) and rice.
Oh and Tom said he saw Dr Yellow again on the way home - Matt and I both missed him but Tom was genuinely pleased and excited, so I believe him.
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