Reluctantly, we made our way to Hiroshima Station to catch our Shinkansen train to our next destination, Kyoto. We made a quick stop off at the bakers beforehand, picking up a hot dog sort of thing each, a doughnut for me and an Apple turnover for Charlotte. Upon settling down in our seats we opened our treats and tucked in. The hot dogs went down well but it was the sweet selection that caused the issues. Charlottes Apple Turnover had a distinct lack of Apple present, making it just a puff pastry triangle and my doughnut wasn't full of tasty raspberry jam like at home, instead it was packed full of slightly sweetened, mashed red bean. It was hastily thrown back in the bag and disposed of. It was a struggle to get the taste out of my mouth for a while. There's something about foreign bakeries that always seem to lure you into a false sense of security, like disguising red bean doughnuts as jam ones or putting fig in things. Anyway, that slight disappointment took up most of the short 2 hour journey to Kyoto via Shin-Osaka station. After arriving in Kyoto Station we had to navigate the chaos and find the metro. Eventually, after a couple of visits to tourist info, we found it but still had to get our heads around the complexity of it. Unlike any other country underground train system in the world (as far as I know), Japan's seem to be partly nationalised, partly private. In London or Moscow (while I'm at it or Barcelona, New York, Warsaw, Beijing and Shanghai) you can get from one side of the city, to the other, changing lines multiple times, only needing one ticket for the whole journey. In Kyoto, there's only 2 metro lines, owned by 2 different companies, you can't get a ticket for the whole journey if you are using both lines and the stations don't show great maps of the other companies lines. While we were gawping in utter confusion, a kindly Kyotoite stepped up and helped us out, he was even going in the same direction as us so showed us the way to the platform, which again wasn't clear. Unfortunately, when we had to change lines, we lost our new friend so we're stuck figuring out the ticket machine alone again. This time a friendly guard helped us out, which was nice. We disembarked at our station and started to hunt for our exit. As we were walking down a corridor, the same guard walked past us giving us a smile and a wave. Either, he's magic or it's obviously quicker (and much cheaper) to walk the corridors that seem to link all the metro stations anyway. We had a short hunt for our hostel, despite them giving us terrible directions, it was relatively easy to find. We had almost all the excitement we could manage for the day by the time we arrived. The room was set out like a capsule hotel, with 10 beds, in 2 rows of 5, all situated along one wall. Because there is only one way to get into them, which is where our feet are when we lie down, it's like sleeping in a very spacious coffin, with a curtain for privacy, it would get very hot at night. All we did that evening was wander the shopping streets near by, with me picking up some socks to replace some rather worn out ones. We had dinner out, just picking a restaurant at random. The food was good, with rice, shredded cabbage and pork going down well, just the huge block of tofu that we left untouched.
Friday
Since arriving in Japan we had been nonstop and so being tucked away in our pitch dark beds, we didn't stir until quite late in the morning. By the time I got up Charlotte had gone up to the kitchen to use the Wifi, as it was nonexistent in the room. Due to the almost constant illness between us since leaving Europe, we'd decided it might be a good idea to get rid of my beard, thinking that germs may be making there home inside. So, in about 10 minutes I went from looking 35 to my actuall 25. It felt so much better and it was good to feel the wind on my face once more. Anyway, we got out eventually and, having missed breakfast, went to get some lunch from the supermarket. For the first time in a long time, we were able to get bread, meat and cheese and make our own sandwiches. The only problem was that in Japan, it's not just bins that are hard to come by it also benches. We hunted for ages, perching ourselves briefly on a windowsill but it was in direct sunlight, so we had to move on as it was a pretty warm day. We finally found a seat, located in a outdoor smoking area, so we had to eat quick and get out due to the smell. We were well into the afternoon by now and still didn't have a map of the city, so we had to hunt one of them down before we knew what we wanted to do. There happened to be a tourist info place on our road, so that was easier than we'd expected. We decided to just go to the imperial palace gardens which were about a 20 minute walk away from our hostel. When we arrived, despite doing nothing all day, we were shattered, so we had a long sit down on a bench and had a rest. We decided to see the gardens while we were here and then head home, so we got up and forced ourselves to be active. There were a few ponds filled with fish and gardens full of plum and peach trees. There were children playing and elderly couples strolling and it was a really nice place to be. Exhausted, we went back to our hostel and cooked ourselves some dinner of paprika chicken and rice.
Saturday
We were slightly more energised today as we were going on a day trip we been planning before we'd even left on the trip. We walked to the station to save the stress of getting the metro again and hopped on a train bound for the city of Nara. And apparently, so had everyone else in Kyoto. The train was packed, so we had to stand the entire way. Our first stop when we arrived was the huge supermarket just outside the station, to pick up our lunch for the day (all I ever seem to do is write about food). After that, we walked through the nice looking town to Nara park in search of its main tourist attraction. The attraction is, or rather are, Nara Deer which wander freely around Nara Park. We sat and ate our lunch infront of a small pagoda slightly away from the park so no deters could steal our food. One did wander past but failed to notice us scoffing. When we finished we entered the park and were almost immediately surrounded by deer. They are really tame and only bother tourists if they see food. We picked up some 'Deer Biscuits' from a vendor and hunted down some willing deer. The funny thing about these deer is that if you bow at them, they bow back at you, so we wanted to find some bowing ones to feed out biscuits to. We found some and got some great photos in the process. I'm sure the deer only bow because they know they are going to get food but it's still funny and something different. We took a quick look at a temple which was down the road from the park and then made a snap decision to utilise our train pass and go to Osaka. So we wandered back through the park, avoiding rutting deer and deer poo and headed for the station. We had no idea what to expect from Osaka and when we got off the train it was utter chaos. We had no map, it was getting dark and as ever Japanese train stations are just mayhem. We wandered round the block, had a quick look around a department store, then decided that we'd seen enough and walked back to the station. It was fleeting, just ill planned on our part. We got a train to Shin-Osaka then hopped on the Shinkansen once more back to Kyoto.
Sunday
The weather was miserable when we woke up but we still wanted to get out and about as we'd been pretty lethargic since arriving in Kyoto. After breakfast, we obtained some umbrellas from the lobby and headed out into the pouring rain. We just wandered the streets looking for temples, shrines or anything that took our fancy. We managed to see a couple of these, one of which was staging a wedding at the time. We were also able to do a small amount of Christmas shopping for some family members but I can't go into detail until after the 25th December for fear of spoiling the surprise. For lunch we went very un-Japanese and found a Curry place that had a reasonably priced lunch menu. We found one more temple on our travels that day and the decided to call it quits as it was still pouring, we were slightly wet and a little bit tired. With plenty of rice still to use, we had the same dinner as our first night, Paprika chicken. We even picked up a couple of Japanese beers to go with it.
Monday
Due to our hostel being a fair distance from the train station and changes to the plan for Japan we checked out and moved hostels on our final day in Kyoto, which took most of the day. So we didn't really achieve anything of note. The only thing really worth writing about is that we ate out on our last evening at place that sold Okonomiyaki (the same dish we had enjoyed so much in Hiroshima), it wasn't as good as what he'd had before but it was still pretty tasty. We had an evening in preparing ourselves for our short 9 day residency in the highest populated city in the world, Tokyo.
We were tired in Kyoto, which effected how much we saw. The weather also hindered us somewhat and this was probably the least planning we'd done for a city for a long, long time. So we were a little bit disappointed in ourselves for that.
James and Charlotte
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