Kyoto

The trip from our hotel to Kyoto was fairly straight forward as by now we are familiar with that section of the Osaka transport system. We changed our reserved seats for an earlier bullet train and 15 minutes later we were in Kyoto. Getting out of Kyoto Station was another matter – some of the stations in Japan are incredibly big, with all sorts of shops and restaurants, including high end dining.

Our hotel is only a 2 minute walk from the station so we parked our bags there and ventured on a very crowded bus to Gion which is one of the historic areas of Kyoto. The Yasaka Shrine was immediately opposite the bus stop so that was the first place we visited. Several of Kyoto's historic shrines and temples have been granted World Heritage status. We won't be here long enough to see all of them but some are very special. Initial construction of the Yasaka Shrine started in 656.

We had tempura for lunch and suffered another very crowded bus ride back to our hotel. Our room is small in comparison to hotels in Australia and other western countries, but it is serviceable. One of the hotel attractions is the hot spring communal bath, which fortunately is divided into male only and female only.