Good evening friends and family! It’s been a couple of days since I got back from my four-day trip to Kyoto. I took a night bus back to Tokyo on Wednesday night, arriving at ten past seven Thursday morning and since then I have done nothing but catch up on sleep and rest that I didn’t know I needed.

I’m not sure where to start on my amazing trip to Kyoto so I will just go through it chronologically. I decided to go on a whim last Friday as I was halfway through my two-week coronavirus-fuelled holiday from work and had achieved very little. After my day trip to Sarushima with John and Lisa (see previous post for reference), John asked me what I was doing during my time off work. I was a bit embarrassed to respond that so far I had been watching a lot of Netflix and eating pot noodles in my room. He told me about the cheap night buses run by Kosoku bus company and after a quick consultation with Santander online banking, I decided to book a bus for the next day.

Fast forward to five thirty on Sunday morning and half-asleep, I was getting off the night bus in pitch-black Kyoto. It took me a while to find a cash point, so by the time I had taken out some money, bought a travel card and made it to my hostel, it was almost seven and daylight was upon me. Unfortunately so was a lot of rain, but this did not stop me as I had a jam-packed itinerary to follow. Seeing as my trip was quite a last minute one, I didn’t have time to put much of an itinerary together. I just googled “3 days in Kyoto” and decided to go with Google’s first search result, “Kyoto Three-Day Itinerary”.

First on my list was Kyoto’s most famous shrine, Fushimi-Inari-Taisha. I took the train up to the nearest station and spent a few hours exploring the shrine. The shrine is made up of 32,000 red arches, or torii, so the climb to the top took a lot longer than I had anticipated. The rain, the fact that it was so early in the morning and, of course, coronavirus meant that practically nobody was around, which made for a very peaceful walk. Unfortunately I discovered that neither my coat nor trainers were as water-proof as I had previously thought, so it was a beautiful but very cold and wet walk to the top. Here are some snaps taken as I walked!

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For the rest of Sunday, I roughly followed the itinerary set out for me by InsideKyoto.com. However, having started my day at five thirty in the morning, by the time I checked into my hostel at seven o’clock at night, I had completed everything I wanted to do on my three-day itinerary list. This included numerous temples, including the very famous golden pavilion, the bamboo forest, some famous shopping streets, the kimono forest and Maruyama-koen Park. All that was left for my second day of exploring was the Nishiki Market, which happened to be less than one hundred feet from my hostel so I no longer felt very rushed for time.

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At check-in that evening, I was given a full tour of ComiCap, the manga-filled capsule hostel that I had chosen to stay in. This was hands down the best hostel I have ever been to in my life. It was basically an empty bookshop, filled with manga and a popcorn machine and unlimited soft-serve ice cream, fizzy drinks, green tea and hot chocolate. On arrival, you are given a pair of slippers and a bag with some pyjamas in. I had actually brought pyjamas with me but I obviously chose to wear the free pair because it was a lot more exciting. They had sizes S to XL, although small to large came in a regular blue tote bag and the XL pyjamas came in the same tote bag with the slogan “I love bread” printer on it, which I thought was a bit savage to the residents of ComiCap who needed this size. The bathrooms were also fully stocked with clean towels and every kind of toiletry you could imagine (so I stocked up on a few things before check-out). And all of this was just £15 per night. Another great thing about the hostel was that there was practically no one else there. On my first night, I think there were three of us in the whole place and this went up to maybe a total of five guests by the time I left. So basically it was like staying up in a really cool bookshop with beds where you can snack and read to your heart’s content with no one else around and it was amazing.

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I started reading manga about ten years ago and my favourite series, Nana, which is about two twenty year old girls who move to Tokyo from the Japanese countryside, is one of the reasons that I wanted to move to Tokyo. Manga books are quite expensive so I had only read up to the ninth book in the series at home, but in the hostel they had all twenty-one books. For this reason, I extended my stay in ComiCap for a third night so that I could finish the series.

Although I had smashed through most of my itinerary in one day, I had now committed to three more days in Kyoto so the next day, I headed to the Nishiki market where I walked around for a while. It was a very sunny day so I visited a few more temples and sat by the river for an hour or so. It was at this point that I decided on an impromptu visit to Osaka, a nearby city to Kyoto. It was only about forty minutes by train, so I went back to the hostel and ditched my coat before taking the train to Osaka.

Firstly, I went to Osaka Castle, which was very pretty but unfortunately due to corona it was closed. It was still great to wander around the outsides of the castle and one thing that caught my attention was the time capsule outside. Two identical capsules containing two thousand and ninety-eight “cultural assets of the 20th century” have been buried 15 metres under this monument. One will be opened at the beginning of each century and it has been requested that the second is not opened until the year 6970. I hadn’t thought about what the world would be like in the year 6970 until I read about the time capsule and I did wonder if we haven’t completely destroyed the planet by then if one of the two thousand and ninety eight assets was an apology note to our descendants. You can actually see the full list of items here and it looks like they’ve put in some interesting items. It’s quite lengthy though so I haven’t given it a thorough read yet.

From the castle I walked to downtown Osaka and stopped off at the markets of Shinsekai and Dotonbori street. Here are some pictures of the cool things I saw en route.

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After eating some okonomiyaki (Japanese savoury pancake), I took the train back to Kyoto, read some manga and went to sleep. Unfortunately Tuesday was grey and cloudy and also a bit rainy so my plans of wandering around were halted a bit. Seeing as Tuesday night was my final night in ComiCap, I had thought that I would just stay in the hostel and make the most of my last chance to read manga, but the hostel ushered me out at eleven as they temporarily closed from eleven until three in the afternoon for cleaning.

So I was chucked out of the hostel into rainy Kyoto and my lack of planning for the trip meant that I had little else on my list that I desperately wanted to do. I walked up the canal behind the hostel and eventually found a cafe, which was nice but overpriced. I stayed in the cafe reading my book (Girl, Woman, Other – really enjoying and definitely recommend!) for an hour or so whilst it was chucking it down outside. Of course reading a book in a cafe was a nice way to spend the morning, but a much better Japanese rainy day activity is visiting an onsen. After finishing my hot chocolate, I took a train then a tram over to Arisugawa where I visited the Sagano Onsen Tenzan-no-yu.

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Public onsens are natural hot spring baths with various different saunas and baths both indoor and outdoor. Different onsens have different rules, such as whether or not tattoos are allowed, but the overriding rule of most onsens is that you must go in naked. This was my first time at a public onsen and I was quite nervous about the experience. I paid the 1000 yen (roughly £7) entrance fee and went through to the changing room. Straight away I was surrounded by Japanese ladies walking naked around the changing room, chatting and laughing with each other. I went over to my locker and changed but quickly wrapped the towel around myself. I spotted one other non-Japanese woman so I asked her where I was supposed to go and what the onsen etiquette was. She informed me that I had to leave the towel in my locker and just take in the small flannel.

Anyway once you get over the fact that you’re walking around a big room full of different baths and saunas with a group of strangers completely naked, it’s actually a really great experience and I would 100% recommend it. Lying in the hot springs in the outside baths with a group of old naked Japanese ladies is definitely something that I did not envision myself doing, or enjoying, so I am very happy to have tried it out! I stayed in the onsen for about two hours, although I could have definitely stayed for longer and I will definitely be trying some other onsens as I explore more of Japan.

I went back to the hostel and spent the following seven hours until I went to sleep reading manga. On Wednesday morning, I checked out of the hostel and spent my final day walking around Kyoto. My night bus didn’t leave for Tokyo until eleven at night so I had quite a lot of spare time on my hands. I met up with a friend of one of the Leeds’ alumni in Tokyo, who had just moved to Kyoto, so she showed me around. We had a gyoza lunch, walked around the Imperial Palace and then had some yakitori (chicken skewers) for dinner. After the yakitori, I walked along the canal back to the coach station where I waited for a few more hours before I boarded the night bus home.

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Thanks for reading my Kyoto adventures! Kyoto is an amazing city and I am so glad that I decided to take a spontaneous trip there. I have been given a third week off work due to the coronavirus outbreak although I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to sneak in some day trips or not. So far, Japan has not announced a state of emergency and it doesn’t seem to be prepping for the lockdown that is on its way in the UK. I’m not entirely sure of the severity of the situation but whilst I still have a job that pays me (despite the fact that I haven’t done any teaching this month) I haven’t started panicking yet!