From the streets-ahead city of Tokyo, we bullet trained it back into the past to the old capital of Kyoto and spent a few days barely scratching the surface of all the temples and shrines on offer. Having got a bit templed-out in India, I was a bit worried that we might tire of them quickly, but the Japanese of course do everything well and the temples were stunning. Our favourite was the Fushimi-Inari Taisha shrine which was a shrine of 100s and 100s of red toriis (wooden gateways keeping all the bad kami away from the good kami) lined up along the hillside through the forest guarded by 100s of stone foxes. Pretty cool.

As there were sooo many temples and the city is pretty flat, we decided not to walk around but cycle through the streets. Unfortunately for Ants, bike hire places don't stock fancy Santa Cruz wheels... He looked pretty special on the upright bike complete with girly basket and bell. The girly basket came in handy however to store our Japanese way of eating - what with the country being so ridiculously expensive, we soon realised that we couldn't eat out all the time so the 7 eleven supermarkets soon became our second home and luckily for us, the food they stock is amazing and way better than any food you get in any London Japanese restaurant!

After a few days in Kyoto, we took a day trip to Nara to do a bit more gay-bike cycling and templing and succeeded in not getting bitten by the vicious deer that roam through the city. Went to see the 'biggest wooden building in the world' and had some fun squeezing ourselves through a tiny hole in a wooden column... I'll explain - inside the wooden temple is a column with a hole at the base which according to the oldies is the same size as one of the Great Buddha's nostrils. Anyone who is able to squeeze through the said nostril will be greeted with enlightenment. We came, we squeezed, we were enlightened... And luckily we came out snot-free.