Kyoto, Japan

Kyoto is the quintessential Japanese city, surrounded by peaceful shrines yet has a big city feel with pockets of little districts to suit everyone's interest.

We enjoyed a few days in Kyoto and felt like a local by using the easy to navigate public bus and metro system. Our first stop was the Fushimi Inari-Taisha Shrine, which is dedicated to Inari the rice goddess. This shrine consists of thousands of donated toriis which are a bold orange color. This shrine is popular with tourists and locals alike and we got to see many ladies in their traditional Kamonos (and I even managed to get a picture with one). We especially enjoyed going off the beaten path at the shrine and stumbling across a bamboo forest with massively tall bamboo trees. After the shrine we decided to head over to the sake district of Fushimi which is the home to many popular sake breweries. We learned about the process of making this Japanese rice wine and got to taste some of it too! Hungry after a full day, we ended up having some amazing food at a restaurant specializing in chicken (and had sake on tap) where we were the only non-locals of the night and managed to communicate with the non-English speaking wait staff!

Before getting templed out, we visited a small sample of the many shrines which included Kinkaku-ji, the golden zen temple, the To-ji temple with a tall wooden pagoda and the red Kiyomizu-dera temple. Aside from temples we enjoyed our time people watching especially on a Friday night at the local arcade. This isn't any ordinary arcade as its not made for little kids but instead adults! It definitely seems that the gaming culture in Japan is a big one as this arcade was full of young adults playing all sorts of video games and most were borderline professional coming prepared with their video game gloves and all. We had a go at a few games but weren't as good as any of the Japanese people.

And lastly as it's been the status-quo in Japan the food in Kyoto didn't disappoint. We enjoyed more sushi, tonkatsu which is Japanese pork cutlet and fire ramen! Yes, literally a bowl of ramen on fire...just have a look at the picture and see for your self!Read more