Day 5 - Kyoto

Day 5 - Wednesday 2nd October 2019

Today, Matt, Luke and I were out by 7.30 and headed to the most famous shrine in kyoto, the Fushimi Inari-Taisha shrine on Mount Inari, after a breafast pie at the station. There were a fair few people at the temple at ground level, Sekihoji temple, but we knew it would get much much busier later. The shrine has over 1000 orange gates leading a winding path up the mountain. Each was donated and different sizes/positions cost different amounts. The orange of the gates in amongst the greenery of the mountain is simply stunning. We did an hour and a half ish round trip and we didn't even get half way up the mountain! By the time we were walking back down it was very very busy.

At the bottom is when Matt discovered that he had received a 1am email cancelling our hotel in Tokyo. Margaret and Tony were already on their way to Tokyo by then! There was quite a stressful couple of hours, while Tony found an air b&b, but that turned out to be pretty nasty, so Margaret and Tony will move to a hotel on Thursday when we arrive. After ignoring Matt's messages for most of the day the original hotel finally replied and said they would pay the difference between our original and new hotel. Still, it wasn't much fun dealing with everything.

We headed down the road to the Tofukuji Temple. As soon as you were off the main road to the shrine it was so quiet. The back roads had lovely, tiny houses with tiny gardens and tiny roads, barely one car wide. They were very quaint.  The temple was pretty, just like the others we have been to. We paid to go into the zen garden, and had to take our shoes off to wander along the raised wooden platforms. Here, there were rocks representing Japan's islands surrounded by the sea, which was perfectly raked grey gravel. It was in perfect straight lines or swirls around the rocks. Very cool. There was also a moss and paving stone checker board garden and perfectly square rhodedendron bushed, not yet in flower. It was a very calming place to spend half an hour.

We headed back to the main city on the train to the Nishiki market, which is a long covered market selling all things food. We stopped for some squid cakes. I had mine with sweet potato, carrot and pumpkin. Luke had his with cheese and Matt had his with octopus. All were delicious and very filling. We tried some tasty saki too. The market was a feast for the senses, with so many weird things for sale, such as tiny, whole octopuses with quails eggs inside their heads! Apparently they are delicious, but we didn't try them as we only found out later what they were!

We stopped of for crêpes for dessert. Matt had a shiralama crepe, which had doughy balls in it that didn't taste of much. Luke had apple and i had chocolate banana. They were delicious and we sat and people watched the market as we ate.

We walked to the nearby geisha district of Gion, knowing we wouldn't see an elusive geisha, but appreciating the beautiful wooden tea houses all the same. It was just a tourist trap really of people dressed in rented kimonos doing photoshoots for Instagram.

We went back to our hotel for a nap, and Luke went to check into his new hotel. Matt went for an onsen, a traditional hot spring bath. We met up later to watch some rugby with Matt's office mate, Will and his friends, which was lovely. Then we followed out noses to a curry place called Kara Kusa, where we sat in a long line at a bar with barely any room. They only sold 4 types of curry. We all had a mixed plate, which was some black beef curry, red chicken curry and katsu curry with rice. It was probably the best curry I've ever tasted. Absolutely delicious!