I had lots planned for today….but it was just going to be one of those days where no matter how hard you try, nothing seems to go right.

Darren and I left the hotel fairly early this morning and started off by getting on the right metro train, but on an express which did not stop at the station we needed to get off at. Only a small issue, but it was a sign of things to come. We got off at the station in the middle of nowhere and caught an all stops train back to Inari, to visit the Fushima-Inari Shrine.

The shrine was unreal, the main temple altar seemed to be piled up with Sake and Soy Sauce and I joked that it was a shrine to the god of alcohol and condiments. There were also fox statues everywhere, both in large bronze around the temple and placed in small shrines as votive offerings. There was another shrine full of really colourful paper cranes, again strings of a thousand each so the persons wish would be granted.

The site continued uphill with loads more stairs, the path was covered in places by more torii, and there were Japanese maple trees whose yellow leaves fell all around us. We headed up, and up, and up, passing through tunnels of red torii gates. It turned out that there were ten thousand of them and they continued all the way up the mountain. It was at that point Darren and I decided not to continue, we had enough mountain climbing already on Miyajima.

We headed back to the station just in time to get lost in an absolute sea of Chinese people coming out of the station, I congratulated myself on my decision to leave early. There is no way either of us would have wanted to look around the shrine in a sea of Chinese.

We hopped back on the metro and went back to Kyoto and then changed to the train to Arashiyama, where we manage to get seats. It took about half an hour to get out there and when we got there we bought tickets for the "Sagano Romantic Railway" as we thought it went to the bamboo forest. We waited around for about half an hour wandering the small streets before we got on the train.

Let see how shall I put this, I'll quote my wonderful boyfriend and say "it was about as romantic as a maccas drive through". I really couldn't have put it better. Again, we were on the train with about a thousand Chinese people who wouldn't shut up, the chairs were wooden and clearly for very small people and although they were in sets of two, two more chairs were opposite making a group of four. Darren and I were sharing with two random, quite tall Chinese guys. Awkward. The train was cold and the guide talked constantly, and far too loudly in Japanese. Although I think it would have been just as annoying in English. If I've learnt anything from Tour Leading, it's that sometimes, you just need to shut up and let people enjoy the moment. On top of all that there really wasn't much to see, and at the end of the line the train just turned around and came straight back.

We got off at the second last stop, so we could see the bamboo forest and at once resolved we were not going to get back on the horrendous train. The bamboo forest was nice, although again it was horribly crowded, somehow ruining what the Lonely Planet said would be, an eerie and tranquil experience of solitude and rustling leaves. So many travel articles have said this was THE place to visit in Japan at it even made the cover of the Lonely Planet guide book. It was nice and very pretty, but quite frankly I didn't see what all the fuss was about.

After the forest, Darren and I headed back down the hill and got the train back to Kyoto. We got horrendously lost in awful Kyoto station, trying to find a quicker way out of it, to the point where it was nearly toys out pram for me. We went back to the hotel and hung out before I decided we should go have dinner at the Nishiki markets, which the guide book said were a night thing. We got the metro to Shijo station and then got horribly lost in the rain as the markets were not sign posted anywhere and the map I had didn't make much sense. We eventually found them and almost none of the shops were open. We gave up on that pretty quickly, it was now raining and there were Japanese people with umbrellas everywhere. If it's one thing I hate its Japanese people with umbrellas, they just seem to lose their s*** when they get hold of an umbrella….and now I was in an entire city full of them. Just kill me, I though. We attempted to walk to Gion, but I realised we were going the wrong way, so we jumped on a bus. We arrived at Gion and in my fatigued wet state I went the wrong way and got majorly upset. Poor Darren copped a bit of it. We finally got to the old street with all the restaurants and almost nothing was open and the ones that were, cost around five thousand yen a head! We jumped on a random bus, and as soon as we saw a McDonalds we got off. I couldn't get a large meal for some reason "Only small" the girl at the counter said. That was it, I lost my s***. "Whatever!" I said, jabbing at the picture of a Big Mac on the counter. I took my food and went and sat down, still feeling hungry after I had finished it. Keeping in mind that neither Darren nor I hadn't eaten anything since our 7/11 pancakes this morning.

After our meagre dinner we got back on the bus and went back to Kyoto station, getting lost in it yet again. We walked back to the hotel via "Family Mart", I did manage to find some proper tea. So when we did eventually arrive back in our room at least I could sit down and reflect on the horror over a nice cup of tea.