Kyoto

This is the view of Mount Fuji on the Shinkansen. So this was the beginning of my trip west. I was going to hit 3 cities all the way to Fukuoka in 3 days and then back to Tokyo. Then to Osaka after that and back to Tokyo for my flight. The Shinkansen to Kyoto takes 2 hours.

First meal in Kyoto was a large ramen establishment by my hotel. I knew about ramen paired with fried rice but this set course was quite the carb on carb meal. There was a thin sliced meat vending machine right outside the place too!

Next stop is a popular photo destination on abandoned train tracks, the Keage Incline. Lots of younger people with kiminos and yukatas. Anyway I tried the entire trip to not get any people in my photos but there were just so many people trying to get their photos in all along the track that it was kind of impossible. So the big draw to this place is that the entire track is lined with cherry blossoms but people were still there to take pics despite it not being in bloom.

Kyoto had a lot of bicycles and this was when I discovered that Google wasn't super reliable because I found a couple places that just didn't exist anymore.

I walked over to the famous street where they had to disallow tourists from taking pictures of maikos and geishas because they were getting in their faces. There were signs of no photography but absolutely no enforcement. I think now they just don't allow tourists or something there?

Next I went to the famous Thousand Torii Gates because I heard it was open to the public even at night. Taking the local trains here was slightly confusing especially since I wanted to use the JR pass I had. Anyway there were only a few people and teens yelling about ghosts and spirits. There were cats hanging out though! I didn't go the whole way because it's decent hike and it was kind of creepy. During the day it's hard to get up the trail because there's just so many people.

For dinner I had quite the experience. I walked into a Yakitori spot (skewers) that only had like a handful of seats. People would open the sliding door and ask if there were any seats and would have to be turned away. The owner was pretty excited about foreigners and was pretty chatty. Tried a bit of everything and turns out I liked the chicken hearts.

Next morning I had to run over to another tourist hotspot before dawn to beat out the crowds and I was very successful. There were like 2 other groups of people there besides me and I had a train to catch to the next city as well.

There were monkeys up the mountain which I didn't really know about in my research but I didn't know how high up it would be so I went down. The older Japanese people hiking up and down were literally the only people in Japan that said hello or pretty much said anything to me in passing.

Hiroshima and Fukuoka