Blogs from Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan, Asia

We were up early and after breakfast went down to meet our guide for the day, Hiroko Inaba. 'Hiro' had spent two years in Finchley, north London and Lesley and she swapped stories. Hiro said that she misses London. However, the friendship could have become rivalry when she said that her sons support Arsenal Football Club - great rivals to Lesley’s team Tottenham Hotspur. However, that was not the reason Hiro immediately told us that she changed our guided tour schedule. Rather it was that the Imperial Palace was closed because of the Aoi festival (see yesterday’s blog). But as we had at least seen part of the palace grounds already, we were happy to adopt Hiro's amended tour plan. We caught the local train to our first stop Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine. This is the ... read more

Off to Kyoto on the Shinkansen (Bullet) train passing Mount Fuji as we hurtle by - strangely given this is the land of technology it was a surprise there was no WiFi on the train. First full day in Kyoto we spent in the company of Fumo and Mari Ono - two old friends of Mie my brothers wife. They kindly took us to Arashiyama and the bamboo forest which we walked through towards the Tenryu-ji Temple. This was a sprawling Zen temple with one of the finest gardens in Kyoto and wonderful mountain views. Above there we went to another set of gardens this time developed by a Japanese samurai movie star from the silent era - Oh-kohchi Denjiro. As you had to pay to get in we left the crowds behind and it was ... read more

One of the great additional unexpected benefits of being here has been that my sleeping has been amazing. I'm falling asleep by 11pm, and (although a few toilet stops in the night) i'm not waking up again until about 8am, and waking up feeling refreshed. It's like my body clock has totally reset itself which is amazing! Anyway, I digress. As mentioned, we wake up at 8am and have a quick look at the itinerary to try and figure out our routes for the day as we are heading to North and West Kyoto today. We plan on stopping off first at the golden temple (Kinkaku-ji) which is the furthest away tourist spot we plan to visit on our trip here, so it seems sensible to start there first. First things first, we need some breakfast ... read more

To give you some context: there are over 16,000 temples in Kyoto. There are also hundreds of Shinto shrines... We have only seen a few dozen of each so far, and it is already hard to keep them straight! We had rain for the first time during this trip today... But not until after lunch. It is still quite warm, and the apartment has loaner umbrellas, so we were fine. We decided to stay in Kyoto until Saturday morning, so we have bit more time to explore this amazing city. We walked to the oldest part of Kyoto this morning, and found ourselves in the midst of thousands of school kids. It was apparently field trip week in Japan! The kids were buying large amounts regional treats... They were also visiting temples and museums. We followed ... read more

We didn't sleep well because of the train noise, and decided to get up early, make instant coffee, and head out to visit the main shrine in Kyoto before it got too hot. It's a holiday in Japan today (sports day) and we were not alone in thinking of an early start! We decided to walk the half hour to the Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine. It is known for its red tori gates and is the central Shinto shrine. Inari is the god of rice, sake, and prosperity. Foxes are the animal used in representing Inari, I think...since fox statues are everywhere! We spent an hour or so walking some of the paths, before heading toward the Tofukuji Temple. This temple was established in 1236 and is in the Rinzai Zen Buddhist tradition. It has the oldest ... read more