On the 3rd May we headed off to the morning market in Takayama before heading off to Kyoto - most hotels in Japan you have to check out of by 10am anyway  It was a very cute market selling local produce food, wooden crafts and material crafts too.  We had to punded rice balls on a stick with soy sauce for breakfast - they were gorgeous.  We caught our next Shinkansen to Kyoto and then promotely got lost!!  A nice Japanese lady called Yoshi helped us to find out Ryokan.  We had a lovely room with two futon matresses on the floor and a living area with mats and a table to sit at.  We had a lovely dinner at a kinda of Japanese tapas place where we got lots of taster meals which where fab.

On the 4th May we did alot of tourist things - we headed over to Ginkaku-ji - which is a silver temple that was built in the 15th Century and has a lovely dry garen (made of moss and small gravel).  We then took a walk down the philosophers path which is a lovely walk down by a small canal to lots of other temples.  We visited the Hoen-in On which is a nice small temple with a large pond with huge fish in it.  We visited other temples which I shall insert the name of later   We also made a stop at the Kyoto craft musuem which was very interesting to see how the local crafts have been kept going today.  That night we headed into town for dinner at a nice local restuarant where we had great noodles - the lady that served us was in her 60's and just never stopped running around!!!  Neen went off to explorer one of the older districts and Jacqui headed home.

On the 5th May we headed off to more temples - it is like being back in Thailand - we went to Kinkaku-ji which is a the golden temple that was built in the 14th Century.  We were shown around this temple by 3 students learning english which was really good.  We then headed off to Ryoan-ji which is a 15th Century temple that has the best zen rock garden - well neither Euge or I were that impressed and would not call it a masterpiece!!!  We had alovely lunch near the castle in Kyoto of noodles - mmmmmm.  That afternoon Jacqui headed off to do some washing and internet jobs and Neen visited two more temples - Nishi Hongan-ji and Higashi Hongan-ji.  That nights dinner was not much of a success - we went on a wild goose chase trying to find this place recommended by the Rough Guide we walked for an hour before giving up and going to Mc Donalds!!!!!!!