Today, before taking the Shinkansen to Osaka and leave Kyoto, O. decided to go and see the Nishiki market, Kyoto's greatest food market, becauses he LOVES markets and he wanted to discover all the unusual ingredients that go into Kyoto cuisine. The visit was very interesting indeed, as you can see on the pictures. But it was sunday morning, and many shops were closed or not opened yet. Moreover, it would have been interesting to have a japanese guide to full...

We arrived at Kyoto station around 13:00 and thus we had plenty of time to continue our visit of the city. We decided to go to the western part of Kyoto again, which is really full of treasures, and to make our first stop at Arashiyama. To go there, the fastest way when you have a JR pass is to take the San-in line in Kyoto station. A local train will drop you at Saga Arashiyama station. From there, we walked to Tenryu-ji temple which is famous for its zen gard...

For this second day in Kyoto, the weather had decided to be gentle and quite sunny. After visiting some of the major temples on the north-western part of the city the day before (but not all of them, we'll come back to that later on), we decided to focus on the easter side of Kyoto, naming Higashiyama. But before that, we had to move in our new hostel. Actually, while preparing our trip to Japan from France and making the hotels reservations (especially using th...

Today is the day.... when we are on our own in Japan! First destination: Kyoto. The journey in TX to Tokyo was a piece of cake, in spite of the rush hour. We managed to board the Hikari Shinkansen without any problem, found 2 seats on the right side of the coach as N. suggested in order to admire Mount Fuji on the way ; so we did! After 2 hours and a half, we reached Kyoto station under a grey sky. A quick stop at the tourist information center (right in the sta...