JAPAN 2018 - PART 10

Day 16 - Friday 13th April, 2018

We had a day trip to Kyoto, we arrived at Shin Osaka train station and caught the 9.42am train to Kyoto arriving at 10.10am.  We went straight to the information centre and purchased a bus day trip for Y600, to hop on and off buses all day.

Walking to and from the train station from our hotel we saw this daily, men and women with children on their bikes, sometimes 2 and 3 children.

                   After arriving at Kyoto our first stop was to Kennin-ji Temple Grounds

                                                      and the Kodai-ji Temple area

In the gardens area we came across a Maiko (a Geisha in training) having her photo taken, we stood watching her for about 15 minutes along with many other Japanese tourists.

We met this lovely group of ladies and 1 man, I was talking to the lady in the front wearing black and white, she asked where we were from and said she had been to Australia 2 years ago.  She spoke quite good English.

                                                               They took our photo

                       We then walked a short distance to Gion where there were many people

We saw lots of girls and ladies wearing Kimono's, in Spring they all head to Kyoto and wear Kimono's around, many of them are Chinese tourists.

                                                                Little alley's

       

                              Looking down this alley I saw a lady watering plants

           

We came to the Shoren-in Temple and saw a family wearing Kimono's, there were food stalls around this area.

                                               Chion in Temple

                                                                  Yasaka Shrine

                          Passing through these Torii gates we leave the Temple/Shrine area

                                                    We then came across Maruyama Park

We were a little exhausted so we sat for about 20 minutes and took in the surroundings

                                                       3 friends wearing Kimono's

                                                        A man feeding pidgeons

                                                       Crow in a tree

     
                                                      A Wedding

As we were walking out of the park we came across a man selling whole steamed potatoes, we were so excited as we hadn't had any potato for over 2 weeks, it was Y300 and we enjoyed it so much, of course he only had chop sticks but we managed...…...

                                  We caught another bus to Ponto-cho and the Kamo River

                At the entrance is this timber post/plaque explaining the history of Ponto-cho

                                     The next 9 photos are taken down ally's in Ponto-cho

        

              

We then made our way back to catch a bus to the Kyoto train station, can you see the little Koala on my backpack ?

                                             Kyoto train station is a very big building.

                                                  The escalators go up and up forever

We got back to the train station and had a coffee and charged my iPhone waiting for our train back to Osaka.

Another fully packed exhausting day, we arrived back to Osaka at 6.30pm

That concludes our week in Osaka, the next post will see us in Hiroshima.


                                                                Cheers
                                                                Kaylee