Japan 2025

What a big day walking! 30,848 steps later, Lynette and I are weary and exercised out.

Today's adventure started with an all you can eat (but only one coffee or juice!!) breakfast buffet at the hostel. We managed to set ourselves up well for the day, which is good, because who had time for stopping to eat!

We left the hostel by 9.30am with the bright idea of walking to today's destinations. We used ChatGPT over breakfast to design our routine and it seemed dubious of our desire to do as much walking as we eventually did. First up it was a brisk 6 km walk through Kyoto cityscape and suburbs to Kinkaku 'Golden' Temple (and it was, very gold and very shiny!), but we managed to take a photo with perfectish water reflections, and not much crowd.

Next stop was Ninna-ji Temple and surrounds, a further 2.5 kms walk into suburbia. We walked through The Goten buildings, saw more temples, some lovely gardens and the very, very tall 5-storey Gojuno-to Pagoda. Iced coffee was partaken in lieu of lunch. By then it was 11.30am and we started on the next leg of our trip with almost 5 km to the Tenryu-ji Temple complex and gardens, best known for being next to the Bamboo Forest. By this time we had started to come across a lot of other tourists all trying to see the same sights, which was a tad disconcerting and slowed us down somewhat. But we courageously battled on!

From the Bamboo Forest we strolled down to the river where lots of folk were out boating on a not so sunny afternoon.

We then crossed over some old wooden bridge famous for not having collapsed as yet (Lynette's description, not mine, but probably accurate, named Togetsukyo Bridge) to go see some monkeys. They made us work hard for this privilege by putting said monkeys at the top of a mountain. Not happy, Jan! Or at least my calves weren't, after the initial set of stairs that seemingly went on forever. After that, the path was just a slope with no stairs, so much more manageable! Anyways, we made it to the top, took photos of the city and saw a lot of monkey butts and other very red genital bits and pieces.

From there Lynette and I admitted defeat and we changed our plans for the rest of the day. It was just after 4pm and we had thought to catch a train back to town to go visit the Geisha district and have dinner. Turns out, we aren't as young as we think we are and we decided that there was dignity in admitting to limitations. So we trekked back over the bridge that stubbornly still refused to fall down, and made our way to a bus stop to head home.

A kind local lady recognised our inability to decipher the bus system and helped us out by explaining something in Japanese which we didn't understand but thankfully ended with us all very happy and both of us on the milk run bus on the way back to the hostel . Fortunately, it was the right bus, going in the right direction and we made it back to town 40 minutes and 24 stops later later.

After a quick stop at the hostel to do some seriously needed stretching, we headed back out to go to a local ramen restaurant, called Moon and Back, that did some killer wagu and vegan ramen noodles (not in the same bowl...) complete with Australian photos on the wall because the owner is a Japanese chef who worked in Sydney for a bit. We rolled our way out of there not long after, Lynette having educated me on the children's classic "Guess how much I love you?" (I didn't understand the reference in the name, Lynette is in dismay).

We are now hanging out in the hostel lounge trying to catch up on travel blog entries, listening to ABBA. Will not take much rocking tonight after around 20 kms of walking.

Photos coming soon... We are asleep 🥱Read more