We had about 3 whole days in Kyoto which wasn't enough really, we arrived in glorious spring like weather in the afternoon - the train station was really futuristic, we found our hostel which was about a ten minute walk away, dumped our bags and went for a wander. Theres a river running through the centre of Kyoto which had bridges over, it seemed quite european, there were mountains in the distance so was really picturesque. We found a place to eat where we had really fatty pork and noodle soup with gyozas-and this really tasty cabbage, ginger and chilli stuff with it- yumbo. We went back to our hostel as it was dark by now and had our first proper beer in Japan as we hadn't spent too much of our daily budget - it was valentines day too so we had a romantic few pints and a bar of chocolate!

The next few days we spent looking around as many temples as we could fit in (there are loads!!) we took a train ride to see Fushimi-Inari Taisha which were red shrine gates going up the mountain - they were all bunched together so they look like they go on forever- it was pouring with rain so as we went up the hill through them there was this spooky mist floating through! We also headed to the Higashiyama area where most of the temples are, we walked for ages until we ended up overlooking Kyoto as it was getting dark - was a great sight. We went to see the golden temple which is quite famous - as we arrived there was a massive snow storm - which luckily only lasted a few minutes before the sun came out - we went on another long walk - got quite lost and ended up on another hill at sunset! We also walked along the path of philosophy which was a really pretty walk along a little canal - in the spring its covered with cherry blossom trees which we imagined looks beautiful! The biggest hi-light for me though was as we were on a bus we saw a real life Geisha!! she was stunning, lots of girls dress up as Geishas to walk around so we saw lots of fake ones but she was the real deal!

we had a day trip to Nara which was about an hour away by train, there is a national park there with wild deer roaming about, you can buy feed for them, as it was the weekend there were lots of families out for the day. The deer were quite naughty and we saw some people nearly get headbutted by them when they stopped feeding them, others just followed people intimididating them until they were fed! Within the park there was an obscenely huge buddha - the daibutsa of nara which is very famous in japan. we were so cold in nara, probably one of the coldest days we have had so far! when we walked back in to the main town of nara we saw all these people gathered around a stall that was making these traditional sweets, they were squidgy made of bean paste and bright green as they were covered in a dusting of powdered green tea they went down very well, followed by a really nice rice cake.

our diets are getting so bad here, every you go there is yummy food and in department stores (which there are loads of) on the basement floor they have a whole floor of sweets and cakes - japanese sweets which are like bean paste and fancy cakes and pastries - its rude not to try them! Good job we are doing so much walking! - will try and upload some pics soon ;-)