Last full day of our first stint in Kyoto today, so we had to make the most of it. We come back to Kyoto in about a week's time, which will hopefully see the cherry blossoms in a better state of bloom than they have been until now. But you can’t control the weather, right?

I’m fairly certain that my family are getting tired of me shouting and shaking my fist at every cherry blossom tree that we pass which isn’t blooming. I’m sure the trees are doing it just to spite me now.

Honestly, having seen all of Kyoto we’ve wanted to on previous trips, it’s been nice to just be able to pick and choose what we want to do instead of worrying about missing out on anything we haven’t seen.

We’ll have the rest of the trip to worry about that.

Unfortunately, as busy as we’ve been, and as tired as we all are, this first few days in Kyoto part 1 have been the "quiet" part of the trip for us. After this we’ve got a couple of busy days in Nagoya, including and illumination and Nagashima Spa Land, followed by a trip to Gifu, then up to the North coast to Kanazawa for 4 nights, then back to Kyoto, then across to Yokohama for the madness of Disneyland and Tokyo. Yep, it’s only going to get busier from here.

Today, the only thing locked into the itinerary was the “cherry blossom” boat cruise tonight at 7pm. I use inverted commas here, since there are not a great deal of cherry blossoms to view. But this boat cruise is very popular, and the night slots sell out, so I booked the tickets a few months back for our last night in Kyoto, and just took the gamble that the blossoms would be out, knowing that even if they weren’t, the boat cruise would still be nice.

Not wanting to go on a massive, crowded public transport journey today, we opted for a quick visit to Arashiyama, which is a picturesque, but insanely touristy villiage on the Western outskirts of Kyoto.

Busses were our chosen mode of transport today, and while the morning ride was fine…pleasant even, the afternoon bus ride was 40 minutes of pure hell, which at one point included my 13 year old daughter insisting that I absolutely should cease my current plan of debussing a very rude Japanese fellow passenger who appeared to be very disgruntled about foreigners having the nerve to catch the same bus as him. I didn’t like that guy.

Arashiyama was a nice place to pass a couple of hours though. Extremely crowded on the Eastern side of the bridge, where all of the busses and taxi’s drop all of the passengers, after a few minutes of being pushed and shoved we successfully navigated our way to the other side of the bridge and away from the crowds.

Options high on the list of things to do today included a trip back up to the monkey park and lookout, a walk through the bamboo grove and a ride in the scenic railway. After witnessing the chaos on the Eastern side of the bridge, the bamboo grove pretty much ruled itself out. As pretty as it is, we’ve seen it and I didn’t feel like joining the inevitably slow moving tide of humanity to pass through it again.

So…after some vending machine ice-creams (interesting variety, and really quite decent quality) and a small bout of exploring the areas around the Arashiyama bridge, we headed for the monkeys.

The climb to the monkey park is entirely uninteresting. It isn’t even a nice walk. You could be led up the hill blindfolded, and literally not miss anything of interest on the walk.

It would have been marginally improved if the sakura were anything more than just buds, but being slightly elevated, the trees on the mountain paths had even less chance of being open than the ones down on sea level.

Almost at the top of the mountain is a very long, and very steep slippery slide, which the girls had a great time rocketing down at speed, laying back with their arms crossed on their chest like bobsledders. My wife suggested that one of these slides down the side of the mountain would have been a far more interesting and convenient way to descend after viewing the monkeys, and I absolutely agree.

At the top of the mountain, as one would expect, primates everywhere. Of both the human and macaque varieties. The kids love this place. As too, apparently, do the Americans. I guess I was that excitable when I first visited a monkey park, but now it just registers as merely interesting. The view all the way across Kyoto however is magnificent. A perfectly clear day, you could see all the day down past Kyoto station and Kyoto tower, to the mountains in the South East. I got more photos of the view than we did of the monkeys.

Once we were all monkeyed out, we did the uninteresting, but thankfully gravity assisted descent back to the river, only to realise that the crowds had got worse. We aborted any notion we had of attempting to get tickets for the scenic railway, especially since it was past lunchtime, we hadn’t even had a proper breakfast, and time was ticking away. We still had to get back to Kyoto, have lunch, and get a little bit of a break before setting out again as about 6pm for our boat cruise.

Finding the bus home was the easy bit. Riding it however, was not. Packed absolutely full right from the moment we got on, This bus was about 50 degrees C on the inside, with no fresh air, and people packed in almost literally as tight as they could go.

The Japanese do not appear to have a phrase in their language for “full bus”. Our bus stopped at every ******n bus stop, and every time it did, nobody got off, but more people crammed themselves on, until there was just nowhere for them to stand.

Then you get the fun situation where a 90 year old Japanese woman, at the back of the bus, needs to get off. Exits for these buses are at the front of the bus. So what seems to be the protocol here is the old Japanese woman just hits people with her cane as she comes down the aisle, since hitting you with an object seems to be the Japanese bus person signal for “move to the side please, as I would like to get past so I can get off the bus”. Japanese people on the whole are a very polite and respectful society. Japanese bus people however are apparently universally jerks.

Unless I absolutely have to, I’m not taking a Japanese bus again.

Eventually making it back to familiar and less infuriating surroundings, lunch was well past due. Not having the time or energy to debate about where to go, Yayoiken once again rose to the top of the list. No matter how many times I visit it, I’m always completely blown away by the quality of it.

With not a lot of time to spare, we returned to the apartment to begin the process of packing, since we’re leaving here tomorrow morning and heading for Nagoya.

6pm came around fairly quickly, so we set out on the 15 minute walk North-East through the backstreets around Hiean Jingu shrine. Despite not knowing exactly where the boat dock was, we stumbled straight onto it, and after a short wait, we were soon ushered aboard.

Being there early, we were at the front of the queue for the 7pm boat, so when it came time to board, we got the pick of the seats, which put us right at the front of the boat. The boat ride was pretty, without being remarkable. There were a decent amount of cherry blossoms out, but it was far from full bloom, which would have made it even better. But I’d still recommend it.

Veronica (my wife) then took Angela and Isabelle (the younger 2 girls) back to the apartment, while Charlotte and I pushed on. We decided that it would be a good idea to hop on a subway and head south to Fushimi Inari shrine, to climb the tori gates in the dark, minus the crowds.

Fushimi Inari is a very different place at night. Eerily quiet, and dead still, it is extremely peaceful, and I’m happy to admit, a little bit spooky. Again, if this were anywhere other than Japan I would be concerned for my safety, but not once did any of the people we saw give us cause for concern. The scariest thing we saw on the way up was a bunch of young Italian guys and girls with tripods doing some kind of artsy photo shoot by getting the girls to lean against the tori gates under the dim lanterns.

Fushimi Inari is a beautiful place to visit at night. Lit up with minimal lighting, and devoid of any other people, you truly have it all to yourself.

I had a strange thought on the way up though. While we were probably safe from any human dangers, what about bears. Are there any bears in the mountains around Kyoto? Are they big? Are they well fed? All questions I wished I’d researched before embarking on this journey.

Charlotte and I came up with a bear plan of attack/defence in the event that we should see a bear, and we continued on. The best plan I could come up with was “I’ll distract it. You run”. Not my finest strategy.

Turns out, it isn’t bears that we needed to be concerned about, but we were close. Boars, apparently, have been spotted around the area, especially at night, and from the tone of the warning sign, they aren’t super friendly.

Immediately we noted a problem with this warning sign. We’d been climbing for the better part of half an hour, and this sign was the first piece information we’d got about the boars. It would have been nice to be told about the boars before we got half way up the damn mountain.

This, combined with the fact we were exhausted and it was nearly 10pm convinced us to return down the mountain and head for home. While descending we kept an eye out for boars, bears or dangerous looking humans, but didn’t find examples of any of them. We didn’t come across the photoshooting Italians on the way down the hill though, so I wondered if maybe the bears and boars had fancied Italian food while we were busy climbing the mountain.

Checking out of our fantastic treehouse apartment tomorrow morning, and moving onto Nagoya for the first city move of the trip.