Japan 2015: Day 6: Hakone and Kyoto

Morning at the Ryokan

This morning we both woke up at 6 so by 7 we were back in the onsen and if anything it was even nicer in the morning sunshine looking out over the mountains and river!

After our last onsen bath we had a terrifying breakfast at the Ryokan, and then it was off to Kyoto, which meant our first bullet train ride!

Shinkansen fun

As usual we just had to indulge in some random snacks for our journey, and then we sat watching the trains passing whilst waiting for ours.

On our way to the station we found sweet potato and green tea ice cream
... it was actually delicious!

The bullet trains are awesome to watch from the platform. When you're actually on one it doesn't feel anywhere near as fast as it looks. There's loads of space so you're not jammed in against the seat in front and they are comfy seats!

Suspicious of my mystery sandwich

We had a little picnic on the train of sandwiches bought at the station, I think mine was egg mayo and what seemed like a flat potato croquette?! Aaron's was a slightly more standard breaded meat sandwich although in a nice touch it was crustless! We got our only sighting of Fuji from the train but didn't expect it so no pictures sadly.

Kyoto day 1

When we got to Kyoto early afternoon we went straight off to Fushimi Inari which was the shrine I was most excited about visiting with all of the fox statues and Tori gates.

We climbed Mt Inari (with ice creams and shopping in tow!). The view from partway up is excellent, but we decided to continue to the top anyway (despite knowing there was no view there) and that ended up being the first mountain of 3 of our trip!

Climbing mountains gets a bit warm

The view from part way up over Kyoto and mountains

At the top! Shrines and gates everywhere...

Aaron also tried the ritual at the shrine putting money down, making a wish, ringing a gong and clapping to get the attention of the Shinto Gods.

After that we headed back to our hotel to check in and collect our luggage which we'd sent from Tokyo by takkyubin (surprisingly cheap and totally worth it). Of course we had to stop off at the stalls outside the shrine selling random food, and this started our craze of 'mystery meats on sticks', from this point on if we saw something random on a stick we had to buy it!

The hotel was quite fancy for what we had paid- indoor water features and a bowl of fire! Then it was over the road back to Kyoto station for dinner where there are loads of restaurants and shops. We both had tonkatsu curry, and out of curiosity Aaron ordered a side dish which didn't have a picture and had been translated as 'bucket' lol turned out to be bread... 'baguette' maybe?! We also realised when passing roadworks outside Kyoto station that everything that can be cute in Japan is cute: