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We started the day with weighing our bags. We left Australia with 18kg across our two bags and we have managed to double that with the weight of books and other souvenirs ^_^

As soon as we walked out of the hotel we saw a beautiful Nissan Skyline R35 GTR. Burble burble happy noises… from me, the car sounded great too!

Kamigata Ukioye Museum is in the Nanba area of Osaka, not far from the main train station. A 500¥ entrance fee isn’t bad for a private museum with a few floors of woodblock prints.

It was a rainy day today. We were going to be hitting get castle gardens, but it’s winter and raining and nobody wants to see that, so we went to the Osaka Peace Museum and then to the aquarium. We got there plenty early so sat around playing games on our phone, then we were let in. Exciting, hey?

This canteen protected a pregnant lady by catching the shrapnel for her. It was the first thing we saw. What a start.

Let’s start the day with some quick floof.

Japan, no. Pepsi, plz no.

Osaka Castle was today’s thing to visit. There’s an extended garden next to it, but that’s not open on Mondays, so we might come back on another day.

Today’s a transit day, we are leaving Kyoto and heading back to Osaka. Given it’s only a half hour train away, we have some time to kill between the 11am check out and the 3pm check in at the new place.

The news from home isn’t getting any better, but the art showing what a clusterfuck our political leaders are has really started to catch its stride.

The only real plan we had today was to head to the Kyoto International Manga Museum. We dumped our bags in a locker at the train station and headed that way.

Waking up to more news of the horror befalling my home country wasn’t a great start. Fuck the liberals. Fuck Murdoch. Fuck everyone that’s had anything to do with the policies and corruption that have led to this truly horrifying state. That includes me I’m sure, so well, fuck me.

This is going to be a short post for sure. Today was the day of “please don’t take photos here” places.

So it’s Friday the third, our second last full day in Kyoto and our first goal is to see Fushimi Inari Taisha and the Senbon Torii (The Thousand Torii Gates). A quick walk down the hill to the Kiyomizu-Gojo station of the Keihan line and we’re on our way to Fushimi-Inari station, the start of the Kyoto Trail. We’d seen these markers along the way to Shogunzaka, and a few times since, but this was #1!

Today we’re doing things in Arashiyama, western Kyoto. A bus to the train station, then on the JR West train to Saga-Arashiyama station. Oh how I’ve missed trains. Kyoto is a very bus-centric city and Google Maps just isn’t great at indicating where bus stops are around here. You can keep the free internet of the big cities, and their automatic doors, just give me my rail-riding steeds.

Today we were off to the Golden Pavilion, which meant we had a little bit of a walk to catch the 205 bus. The first few were full (like, people almost hanging out the windows) so wandered up to the city centre hoping people were getting off there.

It worked, we could get on, the bus was still packed, so I expected to stand for the forty minute trip to the temple. Most everyone got off at the Shimogamo-Jinja shrine, wow. Suddenly it was like we were the only ones on the bus, for a moment. Then a load of new people got on. So. Confusing.

This morning’s goal was to climb the mountain to see the Shogunzuka mound and the lookout which has been built next to it. A quick bus trip to the subway, then one stop to Keage station.

These ticket machines are great. You can either use a ticket (the yellow slot) or tap the blue pad with your phone or NFC pass to tag on. They’re great. Even when you don’t tag just right and you break the light beam and the little yellow fence things pop out, the lights go red and it yells at you!

Woke up feeling a bunch better today. Turned off the ever-present aircon last night and my sinuses got a rest. That might have moved it down into my chest a bit, but hopefully not. I’m still coughing like mad. -_-

For the first time in the trip it was actually raining. Enough that we didn’t really see tramping to shrines and such as a doable adventure.

I found the Samurai and Ninja museum, Kyoto. I was worried it was going to be a bit twee, but we got a short demo by a skilled martial artist, a great overview of the history, and some shenanigans involving shuriken and blow darts.