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Kyoto is what you dream it to be, temples, ryokan, kimonos, streets winding up and up into the sky, lined with soy donuts and tea houses and sweet shops and monks begging and geishas and lots of tourists, mostly Japanese; and green tea icecream and those souvenir shops that are too good to resist from buying tacky-in-a-good-way/hello kitty merch from. It was gooooood.

Meg, Miko, Mum (the three M's) and I drove up from Nagoya on a rainy Tuesday the 17th and went straight to two temples, the names of which I will look up later and add in here: Kinkauji was one but the other I have lost... The first was the one that is the golden temple, and was incredibly beautiful, and mum and I both agreed made more beautiful by the gentle rain. Walking around the peaceful gardens and admiring the red of the leaves, our first taste of the many temples in the old capital of Japan. The second was famous for its simple yet hypnotizing zen garden, which I could have sat in for hours had it not been so cold and wet (and construction was going on at the time so the noise kinda killed the whole zen thing…) Mesmerizing all the same.

That night we stayed in a traditional Japanese room with the tatami mats and the cool paper screen door things and the futons and the low tables sitting on cushions on the floor drinking green tea. It was so cool. And dinner was even better, we made our own tofu and were treated to many tasty dishes, from sushi to Japanese sweet potato, tempura and salmon… I love the beauty and attention to detail and just the WAY the Japanese eat and serve their food. And the fact that there are lost of veggies in their cooking, I really have been missing it. You don't feel too full or gross after most meals, you just feel gooood.

Meg took us to not one but TWO surprise outings the following day, the first was a geisha/maiko experience with the full makeup and kimono and professional dresser and wigs and photoshoot, the whole shizzam and my god was it fun. I have never experienced something like that before I felt like another person and laughed so hard at myself and my dear mother, we looked so funny and out of place. We had fun, and the photos are priceless. As if the day couldn't get any better we were then treated to a tofu tasting feast at one of the oldest restaurants in Japan, I think I went to heaven for a moment during the meal it was that good, so many different types and styles of tofu dishes; soaking up the serenity of the beautiful quiet gardens around us was pure bliss. It was so generous of Meg to treat us to such delights.

Mum and I stayed on in Kyoto for 3 nights, 2 of them in a really scary and s***ty, windowless hostel room and one in a nice, if a little overpriced, Ryokan, which was good to experience. During these days we had a grand old time, tasting Japanese black bean and rice sweets which Mum became positively obsessed with and rightly so, riding bikes along the river, going to the food market, creating a genius combination of mini soy donut dipped in green tea icecream (don't knock it till you've tried it), exploring a gigantic and amazing KiyomizuTemple, the famous one with the beautiful views of Kyoto and just generally loving the place in which we were so lucky to be.