Exploring Kyoto

Yesterday after we arrived in Kyoto we were pretty tired, but we decided to take a walk because it was still only afternoon so we didn't want to sleep. After becoming a little disorientated we arrived at the Imperial Palace, where the emperor used to live before they moved it to Tokyo. You weren't allowed inside the palace grounds, but they had big gardens which were pretty, like in Tokyo.

Unfortunately, I got bitten by some Tiger mosquitoes here, and my normal cream doesn't work on them, so I have a bite roughly the size of a tennis ball. Luckily James doesn't seem to react to them as badly, but he has a couple of bites too.

After that we were too tired so we just headed home. We did have noodles though at this Subway-style rapid-service place, which was cool.

This morning we headed to the manga museum, which is a place which just has loads of manga for you to read, like a library, but it costs to get in. They had some translated manga so we spent the early afternoon sitting outside reading, before heading to Nijo Castle. A lot of things are within walking distance from our hotel, so we just walked from the manga place to there. We just got in on time because entry stopped at 4pm, but got to see all the main things. You could go inside the castle (which isn't like a Western-style castle, more of a Japanese-type mansion, all on one floor with tatami rooms). It was nice but we weren't allowed to take pictures, you even had to take off your shoes going in.

After that we explored the grounds, which were very nice, and got good views of another castle/palace which was closed to public.

After that we planned to head to Gion to go exploring/Geisha spotting, so we headed on the subway to the other side of town and went down a little street full of restaurants I'd read about. They were all really nice, I took some fliers for some to show you when we get back home. Unfortunately, all the nicest traditional Japanese ones either only had Japanese menus, or were really expensive, but we found a nice place down a bit with a good view of the river. James got a Caesar salad and I got chicken teriyaki. The portions weren't fantastic but the food was really good.

The last one was the view from our table, which was good for watching herons (I think) out in the river.

Anyway, because of our small portion we might head to McDonald's soon. We were meant to go to Gion today but it started raining really heavily so we'll do that tomorrow, along with visiting some temples. I don't know if we'll make another update before coming home, but we'll see. We have packed all of our cases; right now we're only living out the small one. James' one is quite heavy; if it's too heady at the airport we might have to jigger stuff about, but we should get to the airport with time to spare.