Kyoto

After a 2.5 hour ride on the Shinkansen train, we arrived right in Kyoto station and then met up with our friend Kent, who flew in from SFO to join us.

View from the train

We then checked into our hotel, the Capsule Ryokan where we waited for our friend Kent to arrive from SFO. Our room was a mix of traditional Japanese elements and western conveniences. We slept on tatami mats but had a space age capsule shower with body jets and rain shower head. All in all, a good place to stay and I’d recommend it.

Kyoto is the old capital of Japan, and because of its historical significance was spared from allied bombing in World War II. Thus intermixed with modern buildings and shopping arcades, you’ll find old temples and shrines everywhere. There are over 1500 temples in Kyoto, so the average traveler is only able to visit a few of the most popular ones.

We visited the gold temple, Kinkaku-ji.

We visited the silver temple, Ginkaku-ji.

Maruyama Park- the place for hanami parties (cherry blossom viewing) in Kyoto. People brave the cold and rain in order to stake out spots where they can hang out with their friends and family!

More shrines and temples.

We also took a trip south via JRail to the Fushimi Inari shrine, which is famous for its thousands of orange torii gates.

We tried the town’s namesake, inari, for lunch. We’ve had many versions of inari ranging from expensive restaurants to takeaway, and this was my favorite version, as expected!

On another day, we hopped on the JRail to Arashiyama, a lovely town.
Bamboo forest

One of the main attractions here is the Monkey Park, where you can feed monkeys. It was fun!

The monkey park is situated up the mountain, so we were greeted with this view up top.

We has an amazing tofu set lunch, tofu prepared different ways. As a tofu fan, I very much enjoyed this.

Kyoto and the nearby town of Uji are known for green tea/matcha flavored products. We were all over that!

We all agreed: best green tea cookie ever, and probably in the top 3 of best cookie EVER.

Nearly every shrine or public market type place in Kyoto had samples of mochi and yatsuhashi (also known as hijiri).

More ramen via a machine. We discovered an area at Kyoto Station that had a concentration of 8 or so different ramen vendors, and we just picked the vendor with the biggest line.

Nishiki Market- Kyoto has many shopping arcades, mostly covered. You can find anything in these markets. Nishiki specifically is food related.

Inside a knife shop at Nishiki