Our final full day in Kyoto, so we headed out for breakfast at the same cafe we kept going too, cheese on toast for breakfast costing £1.20 compared to a £10 breakfast at the hotel. We had a look around some souvenir shops before taking a walk round the outskirts of the station. We ended up in a temple called Nishi Hoingwanji, which was previously used for teaching Buddhism. It was a huge woodern temple and the space inside was vast, it also had the nightingal...

The Ibis Laura and I had chosen to stay in was close to the Kyoto station. So close in fact we could watch the bullet trains arrive every few minutes. Sadly however it appears the Kyoto transport network is fairly primitive compared to Tokyo, and they rely on buses for transport to the city. Anyone who knows me knows I HATE buses with a passion, it appears I was wrong. Kyoto buses are punctual and cheap and this leads to a happy Ant. After a brief stop at the inf...

It was decided today would be a lazy day, with both of us suffering from a cold. We had our first proper line in, before heading in to town for a wander. We discovered that Kyoto station which we weere staying next too was huge, the largest I have ever seen. It had 3 malls in the station including several food courts, where we stumbled across a Subway for brunch! While eating our lunch we were looking at a map to figure out which exit to take for Kyoto tower and...

We are sad to leave Tokyo as we had a great time. After the constrants of the the last 2 weeks in China we had more of a relaxed carefree time there. The next destination on the list is Kyoto reached by bullet train. The transport network in Japan seems great and the bullet train or Shinkensen was no different. Clean, roomy, comfortable and fast.......very fast. It also resembles a space shuttle which adds to it's charms. After a brief ride in which we covered ...