Kyoto

After a few days in the capital we caught the world-famous Bullet Train from Tokyo to Kyoto. This in itself is a cool experience -230miles in 2hours…phew! That’s some speedy training! Japan is a country of 127 million, almost double that of the UK, but with a land area only slightly bigger than the United Kingdom. It’s also very mountainous, but the Japanese are valley-dwelling folk and therefore only occupy about 20% of the land area. This means where there are people, there are a LOT of people! We didn’t pass into countryside for the ENTIRE 230mile train journey! We did however, see some beautiful mountains in the distance and see a lot of concrete.

We then spent 4 spectacular days soaking up Kyoto. Kyoto is a mind-boggling city: It has 1,600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines. Needless to say we barely even scratched the surface of these during our 3 days here, but we did love cycling around in the lovely Autumnal sunshine, wondering around exquisite Japanese gardens, admiring ancient temples, surreptitiously loitering around Geishas, exploring vast markets and drinking green tea. I haven’t time to go into more detail but I would totally recommend this city-it’s certainly up there with our favourite places we’ve visited for sheer wow-factor.

 We had a unique experience through Air BnB, where we stayed in a typical Japanese apartment owned by an absurdly friendly Japanese man called Hiroshi who, amongst other things left us Samurai dressing up clothes to, well, dress-up in, and a selfie-stick should we want it (we didn’t). He also gave us free sake in his bar-Happy days. One of the (bizarrely) best bits about this Air BnB was that it didn’t have a shower which meant that we had to use the local bath-house. This, was quite hilarious. Bro disappeared through one door and I disappeared through the other (men and women are separate), into a hot and steamy series of chambers, which resembled some kind of greenhouse/60s swimming pool hybrid. There’s a great-deal of etiquette to follow, but it basically involves getting stark naked, scrubbing yourself vigorously while sat on a mat on the floor next to lots of other naked women, before being able to use the facilities. But then it’s totally worth it-there are Jacuzzis, steam rooms and hot and cold baths. Enough that I could hide myself (and my naked body) away without having to chat to the lovely (but exceptionally nude) old ladies around me.

Our last day in Japan was spent in Osaka (actually, that’s a lie-our last day in Japan was spent in Tokyo airport and an airport hotel as our flight was delayed by a day, but that’s a whole other story). This is a crazy, sprawling metropolis which I imagine would be a claustrophobic nightmare to live in for many (I imagine I would be one of those), but for Western tourists like me and Bro, this was a fascinating adventure into yet another exciting world of Japanese culture. I didn’t take my camera out, so you’ll just have to take my word for it!

Well I have to say that we came away from our week in Japan with an overwhelming sense that we have only just scratched the surface! We were humbled by how incredibly friendly the people were (and I mean seriously, going-totally-out-of-their-way-to-help-us friendly), we were incredibly over-indulged with fantastic food, we were blown away by incredible architecture, we were gobsmacked by the shear urban-convenience-gadget-electronic culture, and we heard just enough about the things we didn’t see to know that we seriously want to go back for more.

Thank you Japan, you’ve been a treat!