Kyoto

---

We place ourselves on the bullet train and head back towards Tokyo to Kyoto. This city is also buzzing with people and full of energy, there are lots more tourists here as this is the place in Japan for temples, temples and more temples, we check out the area Gion, where we find ourselves face to white painted face with Geishas. They float through the area on huge wedged shoes looking incredibily delicate and surreal.

We spend our time here looking around Gion at some of the temples and exploring the streets by the river which are very traditional in style. We visit a temple which is the largest wooden structure in the world, this is pretty impressive and even though we have seen many temples and shrines this one does stand out from the rest.

The area we are staying in is full of undercover restaurants and shops and it is nice to wander the streets and people watch, looking in all the restaurants to try and figure out what kind of food they are selling. We end up eating at an Italiane restaurant here where they actually have an Engish menu. The translation from japanese to English is very amusing and says things like "the egg gently wraps the noodles graciously" to be honest the fact that we can see what the ingredients are is perfect and a welcome change.

We take a train to the moon bridge and explore the gardens of another temple, these gardens are the oldest zen gardens in Japan and very peaceful. The moon bridge is an old wooden structure which leads over to monkey Island. We don't bother going over to the monkeys as we often see the apes in gibraltar and we are both tired, so instead we head back into Kyoto for our last night before a short overnight in Tokyo on our way to the lakes by Mount Fuji which will be our final destination in Japan.

---