We are now in Kyoto, and our first order of business was to negotiate the messy Kyoto central station in order to get to the bus terminal on the other side. I don't understand why the Japanese feel the need to build shopping centres into stations? I mean, who goes to the train station to shop? It's not like at the airport, where you might have a ten hour connection and need something to do while you want around. I don't get it, it just makes everything so confusing.

We managed to negotiate our way to the other side of the giant confusing station and buy a 2 day pass for the local buses. We were handed a map, which I just basically put in my bag because it was the most confusing thing I'd ever seen. I had already picked up an over simplified bus and metro map from the hotel in Osaka.

Some of the lines for the buses were so long and they were so packed that we decided to give those a miss straight away. I opted to get on the bus for the Kinkaku-ji Temple, which was also quite packed but didn't seem as bad as the others. I was mistaken. It was a long bus ride out to the temple, and people kept packing on at every stop. I was already standing up and my feet were killing me. Once we got off the bus at our stop, both Darren and I had to sit down for a bit to recoup. The city of Kyoto has free city Wi-Fi, so I google mapped our way to the temple as there was no sign in the immediate vicinity to get us in the right direction.

We paid all of four hundred yen to get in and the tickets was about a foot long and covered in red and black Japanese symbols a souvenir in thier own rite. We walked in and were faced with the amazing temple. It was yellow, with a wooden roof and three floors. It was built in a beautiful Japanese garden and on the bank of a small lake. The sky was blue and the temple reflected in the lake making it look like there was another upside down world beneath the surface. I can safely say it was the most stunning thing I've seen on the entire trip and bus ride from hell was soon forgotten about.

There were lots of little coin toss wishing wells around the place and Darren made a point of trying to get rid of all his one yen coins. Again.

We left the temple grounds and went in search of an ATM as neither of us had any money. As only the ones in the 7/11's seem to work we had to go in search of one of those. We eventually found one and got some cash. We had decided on McDonalds for lunch and there was one on the way back to the bus stop, we got distracted by another shrine which had white lanterns on either side of the path and all the trees were bare, making it look very creepy. We had our McDonalds, which was basically the same as back home only the portion sizes are smaller, and a nice long rest after our ordeal on the bus this morning. We walked back to the bus stop and headed for the Gion area to see the Yasaka Shrine.

The Yasaka shrine wasn't as big, although it was very colourful, lots of reds and green and more "torii" (arches) everywere. Darren really liked this one and bought a small lantern from the souvenir shop. I had to attract the ladies attention as she spoke only Japanese, so she could get one for him and then he muddled through the rest of the transaction.

When we had finished at the shrine, we went and had a look in the shops and got accosted by a girl hiring kimonos. I had noticed there were Japanese women wearing them everywhere. We got roped into going into her shop and at first I thought the 7800 yen price tag was to buy, but no this was to rent for the day and it was already 3pm by this time. Why would I, as an obvious westerner want to wear that around Kyoto for the day? It's ok for the Japanese girls, it's their national dress and they look stunning, I'd just look like a stupid tourist and a giant douche.

We wandered around for a bit longer, including down a really traditional looking street with wooden buildings, lots of red and white lanterns and bonsai growing out of the second story of some of the buildings. It looked like they were all just getting set up, and I rationalised it must be a night time thing. We wandered all the way to the end of the street and into a random temple complex. This one was more traditional Japanese, brown roof and white buildings. Nice bonus for the day.

At this point we decided we had enough wandering around and caught the bus back to Kyoto station and then went back to the hotel for a couple of hours rest. At this point I was contacted by Amado, who is now in Kyoto asking us if we would like to go out for dinner. I thought this would be great, not just to catch up, but because he's been here a fair few times and knows what he's doing.

Darren and I met Amado at Gojo metro station and had dinner in a buckwheat noodle place. There weren't seats for us straight away, but I insisted on waiting because recommendations from people who have been are always good. Besides, you could watch them making the noodles while you waited. We ate upstairs and it was a lovely cosy atmosphere, the people next to us looked like they were enjoying what I would have called hot pot if I had been in China. Amado ordered the food, using more Japanese than either Darren or I know and when the food came it as the best tempura I had ever eaten. The buckwheat noodles were interesting and we even finished it off with buckwheat ice cream, which was amazing, not too sweet.

After dinner, which was really reasonable for three people, Darren and I caught the metro back to the hotel and called it a night.