Day: July 23, 2023

We had two main items on the agenda today. A walking tour around the Sakyo ward of Kyoto including the silver temple and a cooking class.

We had huge fun *sarcasm* getting around by bus today. This is easy if you are in the know and another steep learning curve if you don’t. You need the right money or an IC contactless card. We haven’t charged ours up so we were using cash today. It had to be exactly 230 Yen but we used all our exact money yesterday. So you have to get on boldly and when the bus isn’t moving, but before you are due to get off you have to move past everyone and use a change machine under the fare machine next to the driver. It gives you two sets of adult fare per 500 yen coin so you need to change 3 per trip when there are 5 of you. Handfuls of change distributed, we continued our 19 stop journey.

The philosopher’s path was worth the wait though and when we did trek up to the silver temple the groomed zen sand gardens and bonsai and moss woods were breathtaking. I took loads of photos on the big camera and will pop some here. Really sweltering though today, super humid.

The afternoon was spent cooking at Sun Cooking school. What a lovely bunch that run the classes. The ladies were so friendly, helpful and informative. They were genuinely interested in where we have been and what food we had tried. We learned how to make dashi and teriyaki, how to make minced chicken meatballs, marinated cucumber, pumpkin soup and soy sweet sorbet among other things. The food was fab, the explanation clear and concise, and the ambiance just a lot more relaxing than I was bargaining for. My hot head melted into the experience and I could have stayed there all day even without the Sake! This would be on my top 5 things to do in Japan.

It is officially half way through our holiday – hump day. It is all down hill but not from a fun standpoint. Loads more to do! Today we moved out of Hiroshima and caught the Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka and then a local express from Osaka to Kyoto.
Here is a view of the sunset over the peace memorial from the rooftop bar in Hiroshima. We also did a Timelapse capture but I am not sure whether I have the room to render 4000+ images on this iPad so that might be uploaded in future.

What made the Shinkansen fab was that we were travelling over lunch time, so we were able to get our Ekiben thing going on. Ekiben is a pre-packaged bento box of food to eat on Shinkansen and sold at most large city stations. As always the choice (once we found the right shop) was immense and we honestly had no idea what we might get inside. We are learning that looks and taste can be completely unrelated. I plumped for the Chicken Yakitori which was a fairly safe bet of chicken skewers in rice. Others were more brave, Susie thought hers was also chicken but it turned out to be eel! Luke nearly had a nosebleed into his and had to dash off. Anyway the opportunity to eat at 200kph plus was exhilarating. When we arrived at the changeover station we got on a local express also covered by our rail passes. The train had an almost completely glass front like a rail-car observation carriage in the UK.

We arrived hot and bothered into the capital of global climate action. We were 10 mins too early for the check in so we had to amuse ourselves down the road while we left the luggage at the villa. The only answer that made sense was a snow-cone or shaved ice snack. These are better than they sound and the choice of flavour really affects the outcome. We went for strawberry or melon and both were fab.

We were finally able to check in and as this is a whole house booking. So we have a kitchen and a washing machine. Yay! The bed was comfy but the duvet only half size so it was tug of war overnight.

In the evening before retiring we sought out a Gyoza restaurant as this was on the must do list for Kyoto. Wow is all I can say. We ordered seconds! They are very more-ish.