Travelling at breakneck speed: part 4

Wednesday, October 25th.
Well rested, I go to meet Dad and Ishbel at Ozone station. They've been trying to get me on my phone for the past hour but my phone is not co-operating. Change of plan, we're going to Kyoto. Back to Nagoya station, and it's packed. More than usual, in fact, there are hundreds of teenagers sitting on the ground like a spotty carpet. This is weird. I ask someone what the problem is. "Accident," he shrugs. That either means a train crash or a suicide. At the tourist information the lady behind the counter elaborates. "Someone, ehh, dive. No, wrong word. I don't know." A suicide, then. The Shinkansen has ground to a halt but the local trains are still running so we take the slow train to Kyoto instead. On the way we see five Shinkansen trains stopped on the tracks. The whole network is in chaos. It's nearly twelve, the boards at the station were still showing trains for eight thirty.
We get to Kyoto, eat some Takoyaki (yum yum, octopus balls) and head out to Sanjusangen-Do, a temple with 1001 statues of Kannon the goddess of mercy and Japanese cameras. The temple holds an archery contest every year where archers have to shoot the length of the building - take it from me, it's a long building. "I did that," a middle aged man says, nodding at the archery display. "Very difficult. Big kickback."
From there to Fushimi-Inari Taisha. It has four kilometres of tori gates up the hill, and we get there just as the sun is lowering and it makes the tori glow. You remember at the end the film Memoirs of a Geisha Sayuri runs along a path lined with red gates? That's here.
Back to Nagoya for a night off - aah. Relax.