My last day in Kyoto! What to do? After the previous night’s festivities I was feeling a little worse for wear! A morning walk to the local food market could be the only thing for it, although I wouldn’t know what sort of food to expect? I left with Arek, a Polish guy who you’d never in a million years expect to be Polish because he had the thickest Irish accent. We set off bellies at the ready, we wouldn’t be let down.
The morning market definitely set me in good stead for the day ahead! The highlight being the squid on a stick (seen above). They marinated the squid in a delicious sweet sauce and then stuffed an egg yoke down inside it so that when you bit in you got a sweet tasting squid with an egg in the middle…. maybe the Japanese version of a scotch egg!. It was damn tasty whatever! Next was supposed to be the manga museum but because of my morning hangover I marked the wrong place on the map….. We couldn’t find it so we went to Nijo Castle. A former seat of the emperor of Japan. It was quite impressive… although they didn’t let us photo the insides of his palace 😦 Within the castle walls there were some beautiful gardens and loads of space compared to European castles! I think only the elite would have lived inside these badboys….
When walking around inside the Emperors quarters you would notice the famous ‘nightingale floor’. The floorboards were designed to squeak as you walked over them as an early form of security for the emperor. Any would be assassins would be given away by the sound of the specially constructed floors. It was really fascinating to hear.
With the day half gone and Arek not so interested in paying to see the manga museum I headed off on my own. I had managed to track it down after my earlier mistake and was only disappointed by the fact I didn’t have more time to spend inside learning a bit more about the history of manga in Japan. I did manage to take a few snaps of things I wasn’t supposed to take snaps of…. mainly because I only saw the signs after I took the photos…. Whoops! I spent too much time buying stuff in the shop afterwards as well! Good stuff though! 🙂
The afternoon was closing in and I had a bullet train to catch. I returned to the hostel to meet up with Dipesh who I ‘d met the previous night out and to make our way to the train station. Luckily enough the walk could be done underground away from the afternoon sun. We did the 20 min walk with our heavy luggage and arrived at the luxury of the bullet train. Whoosh… away to Tokyo again. I had really enjoyed my time in Kyoto and could have spent a few more days there finding new temples and places to see as I had only scratched the surface.
By the time I had negotiated the metro in Tokyo and found my hostel it was dark and I was getting hungry. My new hostel, although having extremely friendly staff and very clean rooms was lacking in atmosphere and people to meet. One English guy turned up who was friendly but wasn’t in the mood to go out because he’d had a long day. I went out onto the streets in search of food but was struck with too much choice, as was always the case in Tokyo. I ended up in a small restaurant filled with locals, ate some food, had a drink and went back to my room to ready myself for my last full day in Tokyo the next day.
shyguy b 