Ekiben

Also on my bucket list is to ride the Shinkansen - bullet train.

It's a pretty amazing marvel where a train goes over 170mph, that's just amazing.

It's a about 2.5 hours from Tokyo to Kyoto.

But, let's talk about what's neat about riding the train - the food.  First of all, there's all sorts of vending machines at the train station for the bullet train.  Not just tea, water, soda.

Here's a tip for you, if you see the label is blue - the drink is cold; if it's red - the drink is warm. 

There's ice cream vending machines.

Special Shinkansen coffee machines. 

I got a warm Caramel Tea Latte - so apparently caramel is only good for coffee than tea.  That's my verdict on that one. 

The other thing is to eat.... Japanese are known for enjoying limited edition of snack that is originated in the region. 

So Eki Ben - Eli means train, and Ben is short for bento.  So it's really mean train bento <-> bento you eat on the train.  It's a little counter intuitive because you've been told many of times not to drink or eat on the trains in town.  But since these rides are longer, that's actually acceptable. 

Since it's about lunch time, no snack here... going to grab lunch.  They have sandos of all kinds. 

Or some true Japanese bento lunches.  

I mean, the train ride is over 2hours long.  Since it's around lunch time, might as well get a meal. 

I didn't get a self-warming one, which I wanted to try that.  But this bento box seems pretty full too.

Basically is unagi (eel) over a bed of rice, and tamago (egg omelet) with some pickled turnip on the side.  The entire box actually is pretty big.  It has alot of food packed in that little package.  I could not finish that lunch box there.  Good thing I didn't bring snacks, I was going to do that, but glad I didn't, seeing I couldn't even finish this. 

Apparently, they do have smaller size bento at other locations, and that would've run between 400 - 700 yen.  The one my size was about 800-1200 yen, that whole meal is still less than $9US for lunch; and it was tasty!

Now, where to find them... the best one apparently was at the concourse level of Tokyo Station called Ekiben Matsuri before the ticketing gate, I happened to get it on my way to the platform after they took my ticket. (Oopsie, no backsides)  There were one or two smaller ones on the platform too. 

Ekiben

Gransta Tokyo Concourse area