Ryokan Fukuya Kyoto

... lumihuippuisine vuoristomaisemineen, mutta silti kadun ettei jääty Gerossa. Siinä paikassa oli jotain todella kiehtovaa ja mielenkiintoista! Varma kohde ensi kerralla...

Pari tuntia käveltiin ympäri Takaymaa, jonka jälkeen haettiin kunnon matkaeväät kaupasta ja hypättiin takaisin Nagoyaan menevään junaan. Se oli siinä. Olipa melkoinen pikavisiitti tämä, mutta pelkkä junamatka jo teki reissusta todellakin vaivan arvoisen! Tämän junareitin voi ilman ...

Pääosin matkustuspäivä oli tämä keskiviikko, mutta ehdittiin sentään jotain muutakin.

Ja huhhuijaa! Eilinen kiipeily teki näköjään tehtävänsä ja melkoinen työ oli saada itsensä revittyä sängystä ylös. Lihakset aivan jumissa! :-)

Lähdettiin kuitenkin reporankana laahustamaan hotellilta kello 09 jälkeen kohti Kagoshiman asemaa ja kello 10 kiidettiin jo junassa kohti Osakaa. Ilma oli tänään hiukan sateinen ja sumuinen, joten ei olisi ollut mikään ...

... was more like a library not a museum .....very few displays, just alot of Japanese comic books.

Stopped at another Starbucks. Not sure how Jordan can drink so many Frappucinnos in one day.

Caught the bullet train back to Tokyo. Saw Mount Fuji .... unfortunately no picture as I was to far away from the window.

Got back into Tokyo at 5 pm and went straight to the hotel. Took the subway to an area called Shibuya ... the ...

... been the best luck we'd had all day! We were shown to a private room upstairs, where we all checked our shoes at the door and sat on the floor around the low table. For a set price, it was all you can eat and all you can drink for 2 hours, and we did exactly that. There were grills built into the table, where we cooked all the raw meat and vegetables our lovely waiter Kyle could bring us. I think we may have cleaned out the restaurant, we had so much! Noodles, rice, every ...

... the station I had a delicious lunch of fried octopus balls with a yummy sweet sauce and cheese. I had never had octopus before - it tasted like squid and I could see the suckers on the tentacles.

Back in Tokyo we found our new accommodation, a rather gloomy capsule hotel where you enter at one end, making you feel like you're in a coffin. We had some ramen with soft boiled egg (my favourite) for dinner and then went to ...

... which look so much less impressive and bright than their funded counterparts, but it was so much more serene there that I prefer it. Ended up before noon at the Heian shrine, a Chinese looking red-green affair set in a huge Tienenam square-like gravel yard. With the sun beating down, it was like torture. After a weird lunch of a westerny bento from 7-11 (salisbury steak, pasta, egg and ketchup and onigiri), continued onto packed souveneir streets before ended up at ...

... Nat and I got ready to go again to Ikebakuro in kind of day time to check out the shops that weren't open last time... mainly hello kitty store. We OWN at UFO catchers. I got a couple of un-identifyable looking things and a BIG KITTY that we've called Pachinko... that seems to vibrate? I had curried rice for tea and Nat had some saucy, sprouty, bacony, ricey goodness. Caught the subway home and I bought a drink called 'Lemon's ...

... to the shopping district of Kyoto as it is large and interesting enough to keep us amused for another few hours. With nothing in particular to do we slowly browsed all of the shops. Supermarkets seem to be the only shops in Japan where it isn't customary to smile or be polite. Usually, in every other shop we entered we were greeted with a loud and happy Irasshai Massen! which is Japanese for welcome. But at supermarkets, the women on the checkouts ...

... a small donation onto the tray and downed it in one gulp. Very cold and refreshing! As this ceremony was the high-lite of the festival, it was on to the fun and games! On the outskirts of the temple grounds were carnival games and food vendors. I walked the path and took notes on all the foods available. Once I had an idea of what I wanted to try, I gave it a go. Not too sure what I ate, but it was not bad;) I'm ...

... Festival of the Ages). This is one of the three largest festivals of Kyoto. The main event of this festival is a parade in which people are dressed in costumes representing various eras of Kyoto`s 1200 year history. Then, one guy named Sebastian (from Hong Kong) and I waited in line for about 45 minutes to catch a train to Kurama, a mountain village, for another festival. The rest of our group left because the guard ...