15.04.2014 - Japan trip (part 7)

Our second and last day in Kyoto. This day we tried to visit the Imperial Palace of Kyoto. Unfortunately we didn't know that you need to book a guide tour to visit it. You can't visit it on your own, it is forbidden. The problem is that all the day the tourist guide were full, so we couldn't visit the palace. Anyway, we could take a walk around the gardens.

Afterwards, we visited again the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine. This time, we spent several hours there, and we could take better pictures with daylight.

We also did some "hiking", and we reach the top of the hill which is located in the shrine. We were walking for few hours but finally we did it.

In the way back, we did some new friends too. Japanese people are very kind.

Afterwards, we went to the train station and we said goodbye to Kyoto. We took the train to Osaka, and we arrived at night. We didn't have enough time to see anything that day in Osaka, just to go to the hostel and take the dinner.

In our hostel we had a traditional japanese room, so we slept....in the floor hehe.

After leaving all our stuff in the hostel, we took the dinner in a place nearby. This dinner was a bit funny, because the menu was in japanese and the waiter didn't speak english, so we were asking him about what to eat and he was drawing in a paper what was each dish of the menu hehe. The only word we could all understand from the beginning was "Sake".

And that was all for this day!

14.04.2014 - Japan trip (part 6)

This was our first actual day in Kyoto, because the last we just slept there. Our hostel was....kind of special. Just the kind of place you will never choose if you have another option, do you get what I mean, right?

Our first destination was the Bamboo park. The name explain itselft what it is, doesn't it? But this place was a bit far, so we were seeing another places along the way. For instance, the big river that divides Kyoto.

I am quite proud of the following picture, but I actually just had a stroke of luck. I was trying to take the picture, and then gust of wind made the cherry blossoms to blow on the wind. My new cover picture on facebook hehehe.

Finally we reached the Bamboo park. It was a nice place to take some good pictures.

The bamboo route finished in a train station, but not in a normal one. There is a train without ceiling in which you can enjoy all the landscape of its path. It wasn't that expensive and I think it really worth.

Then finished seeing that part of Kyoto, our next stop was the famous golden temple.

Afterwards, we went to the temple of Kiyomizu Dera. This temple is located in the summit of a hill, so better prepared to walk a bit harder. Some parts of this temple were under construction (restoration I mean hehe). But anyway it worth to be visited.

Finally, the last stop of the day was the temple of Fushimi Inari Taisha, very famous because of the movie Memories of a Geisha. Actually, this is the only place of Japan that appears in the movie. The rest are just movie sets.

Unfortunately we arrived at night, so we couldn't see the shrine very well. We decided to come back the next day, and then we went to take the dinner. Be careful where you go for dinner in Kyoto. You can died starving if you choose th wrong restaurant hehe.

The restaurant was very cool, but that dish is the only thing I ate for dinner (800 yen). Yeah, Kyoto could be very expensive...

Finally, we went to the hostel. It was a long long day, we needed a break.