Saturday 26th April Rachel: From Tokyo we took a fast train to Kyoto which took 3 hours. We were on Green class which is first class for trains. The seats are huge. They are as big as the ones on planes for business class. When we arrived at the train station it was easy to get to our hotel because it was actually in the train station! After che...

Moved to a backpackers hostel. No smoking no stench of drains. Never again be flippant about complaints about damp air. Posted a 6kg box of stuff (having picked up some stuff) for 25GBP overland. Central Post Office right next to Kyoto Station where we were. Lunch in station. Filled happily with soba and soup ventured to Nijo-ji. Double moated c...

On Wednesday, 31 October, we took a shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. The 4 of us stayed there for 6 nights and came back on Tuesday the 6th. The last 2 nights we stayed in a small, traditional community on the northern outskirts of Kyoto - the subject of the next blog entry. Upon reaching Tokyo Station on November 6th, Jackie and Byron headed...

dinner with a geisha was my hi-lite!!! wow! i'm still in awe! you can set it up with www.kyotosightsandnights.com ... then quickly made the aug. 6 ceremony in hiroshima for the A-bomb ... a moving experience. japan was really wonderful for me, but expensive as hell! =) ... and worth every penny!

Woke before dawn this morning, got up at 7AM. We have yet another very busy day ahead as we're returning to Tokyo tomorrow. We're anticipating one of the major highlights of our visit to Kyoto...seeing the Bamboo forest. We had to go back to Kyoto Station to get the train for the Arashiyama section so now we get to explore parts of the station w...

I had originally planned on staying in Kyoto for a few days but absolutely everywhere was full, probably due to the cherry blossom festivities, so I'm basing myself pretty cheaply in Osaka and making use of the rail pass to get around the Kansai area. There are not too many people staying in the hotel but having only one shower for everyone stil...

Teaching in Japan is a lot of fun. This is the most non-agressive, polite country on the planet, which means people (including the kids) treat foreigners with a detached sort of respect. Japan is 99apanese and 1other", mostly Korean. A caucasian in Japan is indeed a rare sight, and most of us work for one of the many Engrish language schools (...

Kyoto is the ancient capital of Japan, and in striking contrast to Tokyo is a much more cultural sort of place. In many ways it's just plain beautiful. There are countless temples and gardens Kyoto is the home of Geishas. Can you spot the real Geisha below? We took a walking tour of old Kyoto with a nice chap calling himself Jonnie Hillwalker He...