11/8 - Which way to the train station?

All right.  H here.  I don't know what I was thinking, but I decided not to follow the map as outlined on our Kansai Thru Pass.  We were on our way from Nara to Uji, but I saw that there was at least two transfers according to the Thru Pass Map.  However, I had seen on a different map somewhere that a station on the Kyoto-Nara Line was walking distance to a station on the Uji Line.  So why bother transfering twice when we could just transfer once with a small walk.

Hm.  Wrong decision.  We got off at Momoyamagoryo-mae Station on the blue line above.  According to the map, like on Google Maps below, it looked fairly close to walk to Kangetsukyo Station, but boy was it hard to figure out where the station was while on the ground.  No wonder the Thru Pass Map makes it look like it was really far.

We got out of Momoyama Goryomae station and walked east towards the main road.  However, that's where I couldn't figure out if I had gotten to the correct road or not.  So I decided to keep walking.  I found a set of train tracks thinking that it was our desired station.  However, I noticed that it was JR train station.  We weren't planning to travel on a JR train, so this was totally the wrong train station.  We would have had to pay extra if we hopped on a JR train today.

We double backed to the main road.  Road signs are so hard to read sometimes in Japan.  The road name on the map didn't correspond to the name on the street sign.  But this was the only main road, so we started to walk south.  There weren't many stores and the afternoon sun was beating down on us.  So needless to say, it was sunny and warm and I was anxious to find this station.

The busy road made it's way down the hill, but I still couldn't see the station.  I was starting to wonder if we were going the right direction.  When I finally saw a train running right beside a perpendicular road at the bottom of the hill, I felt we had found our desired station.  As we got closer, we could finally make out the station sign - Kangetsukyo.  Phew.

We crossed the busy intersection and we made our way into the station.  Double checked that we were on the correct platform (a very important detail) and waited for our train to Uji.

After an unexpected midday hike under the afternoon sun, we were really hungry.  Next station - Lunch!

If you want to know the way we should have gone, then here's the map.  We should have disembarked at Kintetsutanbabashi and crossed the platform to the neighbouring line.  Then we would have gone back south to Chushojima to transfer to the Uji train that would run eastward through Kangetsukyo.  Live and learn.