May 21 (soranews24.com) - ith tatami mats, noren curtains and a zen garden, this is one of the most stunning and affordable ways to travel in Japan.
Kyoto is well known for being a city of historic beauty, with an impressive number of ancient shrines and temples, pristine Japanese gardens, and rows of beautifully preserved traditional townhouses known as machiya. It's these machiya, in fact, that give the streets of downtown Kyoto its unique charm, and while it can be a dream for many to step inside one, there's now a novel way to experience their beauty firsthand, even before arriving in the old capital.
All it takes is a ticket to ride the Kyotrain Garaku, a new train that takes you from Osaka to Kyoto on the Hankyu Kyoto Line in less than 45 minutes. Although you might wish the ride was longer, given that the train looks like this.
The beautiful wrap on the outside of the train makes it look like all the carriages are covered in traditional lacquer, with golden embellishments giving it a sense of refined elegance, which was the design brief Hankyu Railways was aiming for.
This elegance continues inside the train, where each carriage comes with its own seasonal theme to highlight the changing scenery of Kyoto throughout the year. Car 1 features maple-leaf motifs, to represent autumn, while Car 2 is decorated in bamboo motifs, as a nod to winter.
