Ate breakfast at Starbucks located in the shopping centre beneath the train station and then picked up our day packs and caught the Shinkansen to Himeji.We walked up the main street of Himeji to the impressive Himeji Castle. Paid for entry to the castle and went on a tour of the grounds and the castle buildings themselves. Had to wear some lovely slippers for the tour of the castle buildings. The tour itself was quite good with rooms done up to look as they may h...

Arrived back in Kyoto and rested, then met Junko and her mother for dinner. We ate at a restaurant at the train station shopping centre with Junko and her mother ordering a number of different dishes for us to try. The food was great and we even had a go using chopsticks without making complete idiots of ourselves.After dinner Junko's mother caught a train home then Junko joined us to check out the shopping centre for a while before she caught a train home he...

Had a sleep in and then breakfast at the hotel before meeting our friend, Junko, who was going to show us around Kyoto for the day.Caught the train out to an electronics store to look for a cheap SD card for our video camera before catching the bus out to the Golden Temple (Kinkaku-Ji). We had lunch at a restaurant on the way to the temple before walking up the hill to the temple itself and the gardens. The temple was located beside a small lake which meant photo...

Arrived in Kyoto by Shinkansen and checked into our hotel which was right above the Kyoto train station.Dropped off our bags in our room then had a late lunch at the train station before heading out for the afternoon to look at some of the nearby temples. The first temple we visited was the Higashi Hongan-Ji Temple. Had to remove our shoes to go inside the temple itself which was freezing. There was a display inside about how the large logs were brought to the si...

We took the Shinkansen to Nagano using our rail pass and after arriving found out which bus to catch out to M-Wave, the ice skating rink used in the winter Olympics. We had never been ice skating so were willing to give it a try.Took an old wooden floored bus out to M-Wave and walked past a sign in Japanese then paid for our ticket to the museum and ice-skating rink. We went through the rather disappointing museum and through to the ice skating rink to find the l...