It was 31 December 2025 (New Year’s Eve). We spent the last day of 2025 in a bit of sleep deprivation and jet lag. We’d left Canberra in the afternoon of the 29th, and had a day and a bit in the warmth of Fiji and laying around the pool and sipping on cocktails. Zinnia had made a friend by the pool, Alec (who was also 7) and they live in Tokyo, and were on the same flight out as us, so we hoped to catch up later in our trip.
Our flight out of Nadi was a little delayed and it was after midnight when we pushed back from the gate and said goodbye to warm for awhile. No one slept a lot on the 9 hour flight to Narita. The adults had squirmy children all over us so we had zero sleep, and when we landed at 6.30am on the 31st we were all feeling rather tired.
Good morning Japan
The freezing air was a change from Canberra (and Fiji) so coats were whipped out and it was a quick change in the bathrooms, where Zinnia immediately noted that she loved being back in Japan where the toilets were fancy and the toilet seats were warm. The things that amuse you when you are 7!
We got through immigration and picked up bags. had to put jackets on as cold already. We grabbed our transport cards and the kids were immediately buying convenience store snacks as it was hours since the middle of the night breakfast. We ate train snacks in the freezing waiting area for the Narita express.
On the Narita express train and there might have been micro-napping from a few of us. There is nothing like that jet-lagged feeling. Even the convenience store coffee had worn off in the hours long trip into Tokyo station.
Kyoto Station
New Year’s is a big holiday in Japan, where everyone goes home to visit family. It was already rather busy at the station, fairly early in the morning. With shinkansens running every 3 minutes to Kyoto all day, we hadn’t originally wanted to book one in advance in case of flight delays, but realised 2 weeks earlier they were selling out…….and only expensive seats were left. We had ended up finding seats on a 12.51pm train that were only half a fortune instead of a full fortune, so had booked those tickets. But knew we’d have to fill in time in Tokyo station in a sleep deprived state.
We went off to store our luggage and the millions of coin lockers were all full with the crowds, and we were too tired to stand there playing bag tetris amongst 4 different sets of lockers throughout the station. So, we went and stored the bags at a somewhat overpriced luggage storage kiosk, and went off to explore.
It was our first Uniqlo visit of this trip and there were some purchases for Soren of warm things he would almost certainly lose within a few days.
The lines in all the food stores were insane, the crowds were so bad you could barely move and we were surprised we didn’t lose a kid somehow.
We did find various bits of food for our Shinkansen to Kyoto. The thought of lining up for hours for a seat in a restaurant was not appealing! We also gave up on shopping in our tired state, and decided to make our way back to our bags in the maze of people, with the help of a few phone photos and pin drops.
The First Shinkansen
Off to the Shinkansen, our first of the trip and Soren was very excited. He’d been wanting to go on a Shinkansen for years, and was very annoyed we hadn’t agreed to an expensive train journey, for no reason, on our 2 day stop-over in 2024. We were glad we had reserved seats for our train as the lines for the unreserved carriages were horrid.
We were all spread out in the carriage when we booked our tickets, but we figured it was best to have tickets and try and move on the train. This generally isn’t an issue on European trains. When we boarded at Tokyo station it wasn’t that full, but we knew this wouldn’t last. I figured I’d better sit next to poor tired Zinnia, even though we were ticketed several rows apart. The man who owned the seat she was in eventually got on, and I had to rely on another nearby passenger to explain that she had a ticket but wasn’t sitting in her assigned seat as she needed to be near me. He wasn’t happy, mostly that I wasn’t following the rules, but the nice man next to me assure me he’d be fine and told me to stay.
Zinnia was asleep on my lap within minutes so it was lucky she wasn’t laying on some poor random guy.
Everyone enjoyed their train lunch and settled in for our first Japanese sightseeing.
We lucked out with amazing Mt Fuji views as we zipped by at 300km/h. Snow capped and very large it was hard to miss! We’ll be back this way later in the trip and hoped to be lucky enough to catch Fuji views again.
We all napped a bit in the 2 hour trip West to Kyoto. Everyone was still pretty tired when we arrived. It was still only a few degrees when we emerged at around 3.30pm and caught the local JR train the one stop from Kyoto station to Yamashina where our Airbnb was.
Hello Kyoto…..
It was a short walk to our apartment and our lovely Airbnb owner met us and explained everything in his much better English than our Japanese. He also, as per Japanese protocol, lined all our shoes up. With a family of giant-footed individuals, my size 9 ladies feet are the smallest bar Zinnia!
Our place in Kyoto was huge with plenty of beds, and the kids were actually fighting over the futon room after hating them in Tokyo on our last visit – go figure! We’d spent time trying to find accommodation without futons, where possible. This place had enough beds they didn’t have to sleep on a futon and yet they were all now super keen. Kids!
Too tired for actual sightseeing and now after 4pm, we went for an explore of our local area. Did some shopping at Muji and then couldn’t find much open for dinner being NYE and everything closing early.
We all were hungry and tired so stopped by a few convenience stores checking out the various options, and harvesting various forms of calories to eat back at our nice warm apartment.
Having been awake for about 3 days straight, it was dinner back in the apartment and we all collapsed asleep by about 8.15pm, no one was keen on venturing out to temples in the cold for New Years celebrations. It was a less festive end to the year than our midnight fireworks in Budapest the previous year. Our end to 2025 was still pretty good, with plenty more Japan exploring to do over the next few weeks.
Up next…
We kicked off 2026 by checking out some of the tourist hot spots of Kyoto, plenty of temples and the amazing Golden Pavilion.
