So we made it out of the snow and down into the rain!! We took 1 very capable bus through the snow and then a second one to Mishima where we activated our railpasses. And railpasses mean bullet trains!!!! We took the bullet train to Kyoto....great way to travel.

Kyoto has a lot of shrines and temples so we visited a few before heading out further afield to see something different. Our favourite temple was the golden pavillion (Rokuon-ji Temple), which looked amazing in the afternoon sun. The Nishiri Food market was also a good place to wander around. I tried a few new things but couldn't bring myself to eat the baby octopus on sticks which from a distance looked like bright red lollipops.

Nara is about an hour away on the train and we had a really good day at the national park there. There are hundreds of deer roaming the streets and the parks and they're not shy....they like to eat maps as well!! We visited the Tosho-gu shrine which houses the giant bronze Buddha, really impressive, good pics to follow, Fushimi Inari is a maze of walkways up a mountain with all the pathways framed by tori gates, we took lots of pictures so you can see what we mean from that:-) After the maze of tori gates we traipsed back down the mountain and came across a coffee shop with jam and scones!!! We can definately recommend Japan for a good afternoon tea....felt very British and civilized and was definately a nice change from sushi.

We finished off our last night in Kyoto by cooking up a stir fry in our hostel.....decided we definately needed some veg! We had apple for dessert and not just any apple, it was the biggest apple we have ever seen and very tasty.