Kyoto

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Waking up to thunder and lightening, we headed down to Kyoto train station to check out the many shops.

The station is huge, almost as tall as Kyoto tower, and it has a garden on top where you can look down on the view over Kyoto-pretty cool.

There are about 11 stories of shops inside (mum you would have spent the whole three weeks just in here) and lots of shoes too (Paula and Hazel). My favourite bit was the bottom bit-food! Japan make the most beautiful and appertising cakes and sweets (I started salivating as soon as I saw them). However we decided to try sushi, which was not to either of our tastes, so we will not be bothering with the sushi bars now.

After lunch the storm died down so we visited the Otani Mausoleum and Kiyonomizu-dero temple. This was definately the most tourist like temple we had been to, you could have a go at lifting a big heavy pole-did not see anyone who could lift the biggest one! There was also a water fountain you could pay to use.

The temple was in a really nice place and you could see right out over Kyoto. The area was full of tourist like shops selling Samurai swords, throwing stars, kimonos, fans, statues, Japanese sweets etc.They were even selling green tea ice cream (we had to try it). They had some other different flavours too, like roasted tea, vanilla tea and soya milk, not the traditional boring stuff we have.

On the way back we saw a Japanese girl dressed as a Geisha. Her clothes were beautiful and she had loads of jewelery in her hair and her face done. We wanted to ask her for a photo but thought it might be rude-so Dave took a cheaky one anyway.

After this we stumbled upon Kenninji temple, which had a den like paper shrine and much more beauty.

For a rainy day it actually turned out to be really nice.

Tomorrow we are moving on to our next hostel in Kyoto. It looks really good just hope the people are as nice and easy to get on with as here. Its cheaper so thats definately something positive.

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[Mum]

Happy Birthday
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIRSTY