Kyoto day 1

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When i arrived in Kyoto i was very pleased indeed with the hostel i can recommend it Piece Hostel is the name very close to the train station and super comfortable. I had my first bath in 6 months i didnt want to get out could of happily sat there all night and just kept refilling the hot water. I was also introduced to my first Sake which is the Japanese rice wine and im quite a fan i must admit it's a lot easier to drink that the chinese rice wine put it that way. So between my Sake my bath and my comfy bed im well happy.

Fushimi Inari shrine

My favourite film is Memoirs of Geisha i know original when travelling Asia but hey never mind. One of my favourite scenes from that film is when the little girl runs through all the arches to the temple to make her wish. Today i got to go to that temple and it was absolutely fantastic, beautiful, colourful with lots of nature surrounding the walkways as well. But i will tell you one thing that little girl has some stamina because the scene in the film is about a minute or two long and she's at the top at the temple wish done. Me however took two hours climbing that thing all the way to the summit to find the little girls temple was a figment of Hollywood's imagination and does not even exist at this site little bit gutted but at least i went all the way to the top and there are so many shrines to see on the way up. Definitely worth visiting, a lot of the arches have Japanese characters written on them and it looks for the most part that they are well kept there were actually people repainting them while I was there. When i arrived at the summit I got talking to a girl from America and walked back down the mountain together and decided to head of to another temple together as it was on both our lists to see anyway. On our way to the train station i picked up something to eat it was a strange kind of pancake with cabbage egg and a variety of other things all hidden inside it wasn't the nicest thing to look at but it was really tasty must try and find out what it was so i can make it when i go home. Add it to the never ending list receipes i need to learn haha.

Everything started well we got the train to stop nearest the temple of choice and we then had to get a bus after quite a bit of confusion we found the bus stop and soon after then bus arrived and off we went. About 20 minutes later we arrived at Kyoto station which was nearer to where we had started than to the temple. We had got on the bus on the wrong side of the road!! And gone right back to the start couldn't believe it well at least i was back near the hostel and can grab a few more layers because the sun that was out when i left that morning had well and truly disappeared and i was freezing. So after that we tried again we got on the correct bus and off we went, the bus appeared to have the temple as its last stop so this should be easy. Nope we managed to miss our stop by a good half an hour after sitting on the bus thinking will this ever end we finally asked the driver who told us to get off and go back in the opposite direction. Great! This is going amazingly well isn't it, on the opposite side of the road we seen the number 5 approaching so weaved across the road waving at the bus like lunatics for the driver to shake his head without even making eye contact.... thanks for that. Finally the next bus came and we were once again heading the correct direction, we made it yes! We near ran up the road of the temple to be met at the end with huge carved wooden gates they were beautiful. They were also closed!! Couldn't make this stuff up we had missed the temple all of that for nothing, could say we had a city tour instead.

We succumbed to defeat and headed off to Gion to find somewhere to eat, now i was looking for somewhere that looked really traditional sliding doors sitting on mats kinda thing but we walked and walked and didn't find what we were looking for. We came across a lovely Ramen shop which was as close to traditional looking as we were going to get so we went in. Now for my first bowl of ramen it was delicious the atmosphere in the restaurant was cool we had to take of our shoes on the way in and you sat down on a long bench that placed you sitting right in front of the bar.. very nice experience and not overly expensive either so I can now officially tick the try ramen box few more left to tick for Japan.

After the meal we parted way and i made my way back to my hostel but not before getting lost one more time the day would not have been complete otherwise would it. I got off at the train station and walked in what i thought was the obvious direction to get back it turned out i walked in a huge square around Kyoto station which is huge by the way to then come back around and find my hostel. After a quick drink in the bar and a much better planned out day for tomorrow i hit the sack and slept like a baby.

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