Helen didn’t have the best night sleep, it was pretty chilly in our room and the painted tigers on the walls did little to make us feel warm either. The bell rang at 5.50am and we made our way to the shrine area for the morning chant. The morning air was chilly and it took some time to warm up in the shrine room. The chants lasted for about 45 minutes as the sun rose behind closed doors. It was an interesting experience and really shows the dedication that the monks have to their traditions and beliefs.

Once the ceremony had finished breakfast was served in the dining room. Another vegetarian meal of rice, soup, pickles, shredded veg, spongy tofu and green tea. We both pretty much finished the breakfast, however the same textures and flavors do become quite tedious when you are eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner! The morning light in the corridor and our room needed some photographic attention so we duly obliged.

We made our way back down the village to where we got dropped off yesterday (at the wrong monastery) and headed for the cemetery; Oku-No-In which had been recommended to us by the Dutch couple we had met the night before and is a mass of graves stones, shrines and temples. So with clean air in our lungs and the sun on your faces we headed off down the road. Maybe due to the cooler air at this altitude the leaves on the trees were at a much more autumnal stage and they looked very picturesque. The intense reds and oranges really pop and with a blue sky backdrop they look lovely. The cemetery is vast and contains thousands of graves from common folk to military generals.

There is a stone in a wooden cage structure here, the Miroku Stone. You can only get one hand through the gap in the wood and you are supposed to lift the rock up on to a shelf. The weight of the stone is supposed to change for each person, the less sins you have the lighter the stone will be. Dave failed on his first and second attempt, his sins are too high! Third attempt he made it but that’s a bit late really!

After walking back to pick up our bags we jumped on the bus, in the right direction and we caught the next cable car down the mountain valley before catching the train to our next stop Osaka. We spotted a cool place on the internet before we left the UK called Hostel 64 created by an architecture firm in Osaka, so with Hotel Michelberger, Berlin from early 2010 in our minds we booked two nights stay here to complete our travel in Japan. We arrived and checked into our room which was a nice size and then headed to the roof for a look over the roof tops. The sun was shining which we haven’t had much of in Japan so it made sense to soak up some rays (and take some photos)! The light and shadows were fabulous, so after some photos we decided to head out to The Umeda Sky Building to see some views of the city and catch the sunset. We just about made it in time to see the sun disappear over the horizon in a fiery red glow.

We headed back to the hostel area to eat locally as we had read of a local Korean restaurant which seemed like a good idea. We had a map from the hostel but could not get our bearings and local landmarks were not where we thought they should be. In a nutshell in Japan there are lots and lots of Family Marts and convenience stores. One of these was marked on the map so we used that as our reference. That was not the correct Family Mart, it was on the other side of the block! Not knowing this, we ended up going for a little restaurant that specialised in Yakitori; Japanese barbecue chicken. We had a mix of chicken, salad, tofu soup and a rice ball. The rice ball was toasted over hot coals in a sticky sesame sauce served with pickles, lovely!

Feeling full and still frustrated from wandering around for an hour looking for Korean food we headed back to the hostel for a beer in the bar and then bed.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

Along the train line towards Nara are some recommended walks and world heritage temples to explore. They’re a little further away from the tourist crowds accumulating in Kyoto every day but close enough to stop at a few places in one morning or afternoon. So with another filling breakfast setting us up nicely for the day our first port of call was Inari.

This is only two train stops away from Kyoto and using the JR pass we eagerly set off in-search of more temple goodness. We have had a knack of walking past the places that we want to visit / restaurants that we want to eat at, which as you can imagine becomes something of a running joke between us. This time it almost happened again. A massive bright orange gate opposite the train station exit was almost missed, however we spotted it just in time before heading off down the road in the opposite direction.

Fushimi-Inari is a huge complex of shrines and temples that are a big draw to many worshipers. As Fushimi-Inari Shrine is so big it did not feel too crowded, which is what we like. There is a tunnel of 10,000 orange shrine gates (torii) which form the path up to Mt Inari, 233 meters in height. The 4km path involves steps most of the way up so it also felt like a good workout. Groups of business men in suits were climbing the hill, stopping for beer in the many cafes on the assent to the top, they must have been roasting hot in there clothing attire. Half way up we found a great view of Kyoto city just behind some small shrines, however at the very top there is no view due to trees dominating the summit, Dave was not happy about this! We had a celebratory orange at the top and then headed down. A very worthwhile visit indeed and with free entrance it’s just marvelous. We were pretty intrigued by the small dog statues wearing bibs – this is something to do with having protection from the cold winter ahead. Helen thought they were particularly cute, you may see a few more of these!

One stop back towards Kyoto station we stopped at Kyoto’s largest Buddhist Zen Monastery, Tofuku-ji. This was lovely, really well looked after and some great photo opportunities, just a shame the sky was thick with grey cloud. A look around the gardens and temples and then our stomach’s started to rumble. We headed back to the station where just down the road is a great little organic cafe that sold a mix of Japanese and Korean food.

We made a classic Western error here. Doors can “swing” open as we are used to, but most tend to “slide” open. We tried about three times at pulling and pushing the door, wandering around looking for another entrance and getting mildly frustrated that the door appeared locked, but we could see people inside enjoying their food. Finally we tried the slide method and Hallelluja we were in. We got a few strange looks but we dealt with the shame! We had good portions of sashimi salad and rice for Helen and teriyaki chicken salad and rice for Dave, which we both enjoyed.

After returning to K’s Guest House we had some relax time with a few blog post updates, a cheeky rum and ginger ale (ginger beer is so much better but its hard to find over here) and some snacks from the bar. Helen made a skype call home to the Roscoe’s to brighten up her stay, they were all out in force with the Roscoe-Elwood addition and lovely Sukie smiling and waving away. Much love to them all, Karl was messing around and we giggled lots – missing you all! xx

After the excitement of skype we read about some temple gardens in Kyoto are only open during the evening and decided that a night garden experience was something that we wanted to do. Luckily there was no rain in sight and we easily found our destination; Kodaiji. Using artificial illumination in this garden works brilliantly, red and orange leaves reflecting off the pool waters bring very much of a mystical feel. The bamboo forest was also great with vertical lines shooting up to the canopy above. We both loved it.

For a late night bite to eat we stopped at a cafe and ordered a kind of omelette, rice and sauce. Dave opted for the curry and cheese version which was surprisingly nice and Helen went for a yellow pepper / white bean sauce which didn’t go down all that well, quite bland. The photos might not tell a great story of these, but they were OK and the price was reasonable.

K’s guest house was having a 7th Birthday party so we headed back to our lodgings and joined in the celebrations with a few drinks. Up early tomorrow to leave Kyoto and head to more peaceful and serene surroundings.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

We have known since our time in Japan just how much the Japanese love Halloween, from our first steps in Tokyo through to here in Kyoto there were pumpkins on street corners, halloween banners in food halls and fancy dress costumes on offer. Although the start to our day wasn’t particularly Halloween based we would experience more of this by the end of the day.

We had heard there was some bad weather on the way, the typhoon seemed to have missed this side of Japan but there were winds and rain to come, so after a filling and hearty breakfast from K’s – around £5.50 for eggs, toast, jam, cereal, fruit, yoghurt, juices, potatoes and frankfurters for the meat eaters we wanted to hire bikes again and set off around the city to do some historic Temple sight-seeing with the Golden Pavilion as our first port of call. It was a pretty long bike ride from the hostel and took over an hour to get there on our bikes, but we were enjoying taking in the streets around us, perhaps less so going up hills with no gears but all the same it was really good fun. We arrived at the Pavilion area and it started to rain, we hadn’t brought any brolly’s with us either so up went the hoods, plastic bags on the bike seats and we bought our tickets for the Pavilion. It was a real shame the weather was so poor, although it didn’t stop all the other hundreds of sightseers making their way to this site, it did mean we couldn’t get the best from our cameras and the Pavilion couldn’t shine in it’s full gold leaf glory. We find it hard to feel disappointed though as these things are always new to us and it’s all part of the experience being stuck in the rain at a world famous pagoda.

We thought it would take us a long while to get back so instead of going around the city as drowned rats we would just head straight back to K’s and then re-start the day when we had warmed up and dried off!! It took a further hour to get back and by that stage we were soaked, at the hostel they recommended we take a bath as otherwise they feared we would get a cold, so considerate of them! We opted for hot showers and cups of tea before deciding that catching up on photo-editing and blog writing would be a good idea. It’s very easy to fall behind with this!

So a couple of hours of editing, writing and joining in the chat with fellow travelers sitting out the rain and we were ready to go in search of a lonely planet recommended tea tasting ceremony a couple of tube stops away. It was still chucking it down but we were able to use umbrella’s from K’s (you can pick up a brolly outside anywhere and use it as long as it’s either returned or moved onto the next place for someone else to use). We arrived at En (the tea house) at 6pm on the dot, the last time slot of the day for the tea ceremony and were welcomed by a traditionally dressed young lady who welcomed us into the dimly lit tea room.

We were the only people in the ceremony so it was a really personal experience. She spoke to us about the history of the ceremony, that it is practiced as a form of meditation and conducted the ceremony, explaining that she would explain the process afterwards. It was a very heart warming experience with the sound of rain pelting down on the roof she quietly and smoothly went through the ceremony very methodically and in a way that was quite spell binding. She went on to say that an tea ceremony usually lasts around 5 hours and she would invite her friends round once a month to participate in the tea ceremony with her. The tea is green powdered tea and you whisk it up into a froth drinking it only when you have been invited to and after eating a Japanese sweet, that helps to take away any bitter tea taste. We each had a go at making our own tea and then asked her various questions and she posed for a few snaps for us. We felt really good after this, it was quite a calming experience.

We stopped off for a quick bite to eat at a local Thai restaurant on our way back and then joined in with the K’s Halloween party at the bar for an hour or so. Some of the staff did a performance and there were free sweets going around. The bar was packed and it was a good little atmosphere.

We didn’t stay out too late as on the list for the next day were a few trips where we would use our JR passes to get around.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)

After the loveliness that was Dave’s birthday day we got up early, packed our bags and took advantage of our late check out time but going to one of Japan’s most famous and most beautiful gardens; the Kenrokuen Gardens. The light was quite flat so we weren’t able to capture the gardens as we would have liked, but there were good views and the gardens were kept in pristine condition so it was all worth while doing. They were making some wooden scaffolding to protect the trees as a typhoon was on it’s way. It seemed pretty calm considering the typhoon was due to hit Japan today!!

With the Kenrokuen gardens ticked off our list we went back to Namaste, checked out and said our goodbyes before setting off to the train station to pick up our next part of the travel. Kyoto was our next destination and we had changed our itinerary a little so we could stay for 3 nights as opposed to two. We were planning on staying in Nara, however we changed our minds due to the accommodation that we had booked was nearly 3 times more than Kyoto and it seemed like another place where you are surrounded by bus loads of tourists, every day you’re there. We may decide to do this as a day trip from Kyoto, but it felt good to be flexible on this.

So at around 3pm we arrived in Kyoto at their amazingly large station right opposite the Kyoto tower. Having got our bearings (it often takes us a while on the ‘You are here!” maps) we walked to K’s guest house, something like a 10-15 minute walk from the station. We knew we were on the right track though when we came across other backpackers and westerners making their way to the same place.

We checked into our little room, bigger than the Sakura Hotel in Tokyo, but a little prison like with bunk beds and a small desk with enough floor space that Helen thought she could do some yoga in there! The rooms are tightly packed in here though with metal doors and there wasn’t much of a feel for personality on our floor. In the communal areas the space is much more welcoming with sofas, a kitchen, books, music, an outdoor seating area and so on. We soon bumped into Mel and Cane who we had met at Namaste in Kanazawa as we were about to explore the streets by bikes. This was so much fun exploring backstreets and the river paths nearby our hostel. You can go some distance and we managed a spot of filming from the bikes which extended our creative processes somewhat. At waist level, sometimes from the handlebar view-point we rode past joggers, lovers, beggars, cats, people chatting on the riverside, skaters and other cyclists. Once the sun had set we made our way back through the busy down town area and eventually found K’s again!

For dinner we went to a Japanese restaurant just over the bridge from the hostel and Helen had some of the best udon noodles to date whilst Dave enjoyed another traditional style cooked Japanese set dinner. Very good. There’s a great bar at the hostel that attracts backpackers and other westerners from around the area so we sat in there for a drink, people watched and then went back to our little cell, we were getting a good feel for the place already.

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f2.0 & Olympus PEN, 17mm f2.8 & 100mm f2.8, processed in Lightroom 3)