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!

Day 4 - Kyoto

Day 4 - Tuesday 1st October 2019

Happy national China day!!!

Today was a very busy one for us. We headed off to Kyoto, Japans ancient capital for over 1000 years, before it changed to Tokyo. When we booked our train tickets, the only one we could get reserved seats on was the 6.13 am, which meant we had to get up at 5am!!! It was still dark as we wheeled our cases to the station! It was worth it though, knowing we had lovely, roomy first class seats and didn't have to stand for 3 hours.

It meant that we arrived in Kyoto at 9am, nice and early. We booked our train back to the airport while we waited for Tony, Margaret and Luke to arrive from Osaka half an hour later.

Our hotel is very close to the main station, so it was only a short walk to drop off our bags and head back out again to explore.

In Kyoto there are more than 100 temples and shrines, and one is directly over the road from our hotel. It's called the Higashi Hanganji Temple and is absolutely huge. There are only a couple of buildings, but they are absolutely enormous. The roof of each building on the inside is an interesting checked black and white design that made Matt think of chess and me think of chocolate. The temple has burned down 4 times in its history (the roof made of bark that looks like thatching probably didn't help). There is a huge rope made of human hair on display. The hair was donated by women who helped to rebuild the temple one of these times.

Just behind our hotel was the Shosei-en gardens, which were a bit scruffy at first, but eventually the trail led us round to a nice formal pond, with herons fishing and covered in lily pads, which was quite pretty. By this point it was swelteringly hot at 34 degrees and very humid!

We then headed to Kyoto main station, a modern steel and glass structure that has a 'skygarden' on the 11th floor (just a viewing platform with grass) and a 'skywalk' across the ceiling of the station. It's a tunnel that gives good views over the city and surrounding mountains. You can see the UFO looking Kyoto tower opposite too. Unfortunately, it didn't give you a view out into the station though.

We stopped for lunch in a restaurant in the station for a katsu curry and then headed on the underground train to the Imperial Palace, which was where rulers lived for 500 years. It's inside an enormous park, which also houses the tiny Nashinoki-jinja Shrine. The palace is free to get in and includes a guided tour. We learnt that the manhole covers in Kyoto have a wheel type design on them because of the oxen drawn carts that noble folk used to arrive at the palace in. The horse and oxen stables were interesting structures and the palace living quarters were huge with paper walls. There was a beautiful Japanese garden, wonderfully maintained and with a gorgeous bridge, pebble beach and lovely maple trees. A very interesting place to visit.

We went back to the hotel for a rest after the palace, then met up just as a thunder and lightening storm started. We dashed into a wagu beef restaurant for the cheap beer, but ended up staying for dinner. Margaret and I both had a 'full' glass of prosecco, where the glass comes in a little box and the glass is filled with bubbly until it is overflowing. You have to slurp from the top and every time you lift your drink up it drips everywhere!  We finished up with a trip to Mr Donut and then the boys went for a beer while the girls had an early night! Margaret and Tony are off to Tokyo tomorrow, so Matt, Luke and I are here for another day exploring the temples and shrines.

Day 3 - Miyajima

Day 3 - Monday 30th September 2919

Up and out early today, before 7.30. We got an 8am train using our rail passes and had a 30 minute journey to Miyajima station. Then it was a 10 minute ferry to Miyajima island, passing lots of planks of wood floating in the ocean. We later found out that they were for growing oysters on the underside. Hiroshima and the surrounding area are famous for their oysters.

We had arrived early so that the Ohtorii gate (a red gateway) would appear to be floating at high tide. It lives on a bed of mud and you can walk up to it at lowtide, but at high tide it 'floats'. Only, today it was a huge pile of scaffolding 'floating' on the water. Renovations. Oh well.

The rest of Miyajima is fabulous. Its like a seaside town with lots of shops and temples. We went into the Itsukushimajinja shrine, which also 'floats'. Its a huge wooden platform with covered walkways and statues of lions everywhere. There is also the 5 story Hokoku pagoda, which is bright red, but you can't go up it. We did look in the treasure room, which had samurai swords and samurai clothing. There was even a model of the Ohtorii gate being constructed and therefore covered in very old-fashioned scaffolding!

Lots of wild deer roam around the town and mountains and are very bold about making friends with tourists or wandering into shops.

It was still early, and getting very humid, so we decided to get the cable car up to mount Misen. It is supposedly a miracle site, and has a flame that had been burning for 1200 years. The flame lit the one now standing outside the peace museum in Hiroshima.

The cable car was great and the views were spectacular over the other islands and the sea of maple trees below us. A couple of leaves had turned bright red, but we are a few months to early for the autumn leaf show. You could see tiny beaches in amongst the greenery. Very beautiful.

After the cable car was a funicular cable car that took you the last stretch to the viewing platform. We weren't at the top though, so decided to do the 1km hike to the top. You trek downhill for a third of it and then up, very steeply. It was very hard work in the humid air. Dotted along the lush green hiking paths were temples and shrines full of little stone human shaped statues, all wearing an assortment of hats and sunglasses. I'm not sure if this was significant or if they were just abandoned or forgotten hats. One statue holding a book had reading glasses on! Very cute.

We made it to the top of the mountain drenched in sweat, but feeling accomplished. The views were incredible, if a bit hazy. The trek back was much easier. There were so many people heading up the mountain as we came down at noon. I'm so glad we got up early and had the place pretty much to ourselves.

At the bottom we headed for lunch and ended up having lots of small snacks. We had deep fried fish and potato cakes, with cold tea that had an aftertaste of coffee, fried spiralled potato's, fried asparagus fish cakes wrapped in bacon, katsu curry oyster filled bread, fried maple shaped chocolate filled pastries and custard filled maple shaped sponge cakes. All washed down with Hiroshima grown lemon soda for me and lemon beer for Matt. The food street was great. Filled with domany interesting food stalls and touristy shops, and deer of course! What a great morning.

When we arrived back in Hiroshima we headed straight for the Peace Museum, something we felt we had to do when visiting this area. It was just as awful as we had imagined it would be. I learnt a lot and the information was presented in quite a matter-of-fact, almost emotionless way. It only took an hour to get around it, so I felt it wasn't overdone to the point where you couldn't take any more. It had one section where individual, named children's stories were told, next to an actual item of clothing or possession they had on them that fateful day. That bit was particularly difficult to see. But it was all done very tastefully.

Still, we needed a huge ice cream afterwards to cheer us up, as we looked at the tree that had flowered the following year after the bomb, a fitting metaphor for how life goes on no matter what.

We were pretty knackared by this point and my foot was causing some trouble, after a mistep trekking the mountain earlier. We headed back to the hotel to freshen up, then went in search of a bar to watch the rugby and eat. We found 'Jennys', a bit of a dive, but with surprisingly good pizzas and burgers. Samoa vs Scotland was on the big screen. We were the first people in there, but it soon filled up with rugby fans.