Due to jet lag, I awoke early so went out and bought pastries and orange juice for breakfast. Matthew and Emily arrived late in the night so we met them and had a quick breakfast on the balcony before rushing over to the station to catch the skinkansen. 

The Shinkansen is one of the fastest trains in the world and we travelled in plush seats at 170mph across from Tokyo to Kyoto. Along the way we caught a good view of Mount Fuji and there was barely a cloud in the sky. Apparently this is quite a rare thing to see the mountain in front of blue sky and we are extremely lucky. The train journey was an amazing experience but at 170mph I did start to feel nauseous with the buildings flashing by. 

When we arrived in Kyoto, we went straight to the hotel, dropped our bags and went out to find the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine. It’s famous for its orange posts which have been donated for hundreds of years by various businessmen and scholars. The temple is as old as 800AD but feels almost new. I believe part of the Japanese culture is to really look after, clean and nurture their environment and the shrine seemed well maintained. We walked through the long walk way of posts through the forest and along by the flowing stream for about an hour. We would have liked to have continued climbing the mountain but it had gotten dark and we wanted to see the bamboo forest light show. So we climbed a little further to see a beautiful view of Kyoto at sunset and then descended to catch the train to the bamboo forest.

We were lucky once again because there was a light show for 3 nights only for the bamboo forest and we managed to see the spectacular bamboo trees lit up by lanterns. We walked through lantern lit pathways and each lantern was made differently by what looked like local school children. It’s difficult to describe how incredible the trees looked with big bamboo stalks growing high above our heads. It was a pandas all you can eat buffet!! 

By the time we had finished the bamboo forest we were all hungry and tired and had walked 10 miles. In Japan there are vending machines on every corner and rows of them at that. So we had a quick vending machine snack of: corn soup, banana flavoured condensed milk, vegetable broth, hot lemon, green tea and coffee! 

We then caught the train back to our hotel district and wandered down by the river to find a nice restaurant. The streets were dainty and narrow and reminded me a lot of the Chinese hutongs. We found a small restaurant were once again luck was on our side. It had a small room to the side perfect for 6 people to eat on a small table nestled on the floor. We had our first taste of proper Japanese sushi and ate extremely well. 

We wander back through the small streets and stepped into a bar for a quick drink where I promptly fell asleep. It gets cold here but all the buildings are extremely well heated and as soon as I step inside, the eyes close. So we soon went home and slept