Onsen mecca

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And we're in Beppu, hot spring ('onsen' in Japanese) paradise, doing some well deserved relaxing after 7 days of intense sight seeing!
To start from where we left off: after having spent 4 full days in amazing Tokyo, we left for Kyoto Tuesday night, arriving (very) early Wednesday morning. Kyoto is also one of Japan's biggest cities, but couldn't be more different from Tokyo in terms of architecture and atmosphere. Where Tokyo is hectic and bustling, packed with sky-soaring glass and metal facades with neon lights glaring you down from every street corner, Kyoto is far more down to earth: the buildings are shorter and less imposing, the streets less packed with busy business suits... the general feel of the city is more peaceful, almost suburbian.

After having dropped off our packs at the hostel, we set out to explore the city: Malu had already prepared an extensive sight seeing route for us, consisting of a variety of different must-see temples and shrines. We started with Kiyomizu-dera, an ancient temple from where we got a great view over the city. We walked down a number of small, winding and very charming streets that eventually brought us to a park where we ate lunch under blooming cherry blossom trees. From there on to Yasaka-jinja shrine, followed by another temple... (can't remember the name...!). and back to the hostel for a rest.
In the evening we walked the streets of the famous Geisha neighbourhood, Gion. We saw the 'most beautiful street in Japan' which really was truely stunning, linned with blooming cherry blossom trees and intimate Japanese restaurants. We didn't see any actual geishas at work, but got an impression of the secretive and mysterious grounds they work on.

The next day more sight seeing was on the programme. We started in Fushimi Inari, just outside of Kyoto, where we went on a small forrest/hill hike. We ate a lunch of soba (japanese noodle soup) sitting on mats at a traditional japanese restaurant before continuing to a Japanese garden, Daitoku-ji, at the other end of the city. This was quite a fun experience, seeing as the a zen buddhism idea of 'garden' didn't exactly correspond with ours: there was no grass and hardly any plants, and we inspected the garden from a raised wooden platform. There was raked gravel in place of grass, and stones with symbolic existential meanings (such as turtle, crane and sleeping cow...) in stead of the traditional flowers... all in all, it was a very interesting experience.

We celebrated our last day in Kyoto by eating out: had Otonomiyaki, a Japanese pancake/omlette/pizza - very delicious!

Friday morning we did a bit of last minute souvenir-shopping before beginning our journey south to Beppu. 3 Shinkansen (Japanese high-speed trains, really the most awsome traines we've ever travelled on! very luxurious) trains later we found ourselves in this coastal town reknown for its numerous hot springs. And the first thing we did after checking in was of course to hunt down the nearest onsen and soak in water 42 degrees hot for as long as we found appropriate... pure heaven!
We went again yesterday morning, also had a traditional Japanese sandbath - warm sand was piled on top of us by some very effecient Japanese women, a very strange experience!
We did nothing much of interest yesterday, and don't plan on doing anything particular today either... other than trying out a new onsen, an outside one this time, where we can soak in the warm water whilst gazing out over Beppu-bay... 😊.
Tomorrow we head on to Hiroshima, Wednesday evening will find us back in Tokyo, from where we will fly off to Australia, Perth, late Thursday evening... So far so good!

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