An amazing day on bikes with our guide Niall, who has lived here on and off for 5 years. He’s a teacher from Vancouver and we hit it off really well. He’s an avid reader of Japanese history so he was able to fill in a lot of the gaps I’ve had regarding the customs and traditions. I won’t go on about a lot of the conversations we had as it would take away from the incredible visual feast we copped today.

Backstreets, big streets, avoiding masses of pedestrians, alleyways, it was a wonderful way to experience the real Kyoto. Again it’s difficult to capture the city on film as we only have cheap cameras and we were riding bikes but the memories are locked away forever.

The first major highlight was heading up the hill from Kyoto University to the mountain range east of Kyoto. Suddenly all noise disappears and you arrive at this traditional tiny street full of art and souvenir vendors and plenty of food being cooked. Keep going up the hill and you come to the World Heritage listed 14th-century temple Ginkakuji. So incredibly neat and tidy were the gardens and grounds, it looked like they’d been vacuumed! There were sand sculptures that didn’t have a grain of sand out of place, and believe me, I tried to find one! Incredibly peaceful place.

From the temple, we got back on our bikes and took off close to the mountain at the base on what’s known as the philosophers walk. Absolutely stunning little track through beautiful forest and traditional Japanese architecture. One of the best 30 minutes or so of the trip so far.

Then we came across this huge temple called Nyakuoji which was set on enormous gracious grounds. I asked Niall about just how many temples is enough? He said there are 1500 temples and shrines in Kyoto alone! I said that if that was Australia, there would be an uproar that a developer couldn’t get his hand on it to build apartments. Niall said Kyoto was once the capital of Japan before Tokyo took the mantle, so when that happened, Kyoto made the decision to be the cultural and heritage capital of Japan, therefore taking a stand against any crappy development and keeping the historical buildings and temples. In fact, when the Americans were planning to drop the H bombs on Japan, they had originally targeted Kyoto but had second thoughts because of its cultural significance. They also decided against Tokyo because there was only 30% of it left after they firebombed it in 1945. So Hiroshima and Nagasaki it was.

Back on the bikes and off through the hectic part of the city before disappearing down sneaky little backstreets and alleys and into the geisha area. The geishas’ study for 5 years in dance and all things decorum and are very hard to spot on the streets. The photo below of Lynda with a geisha is a pretend one who has been to the Claytons school of instant geisha. The streets of Kyoto are fascinating, intriguing and leave you wanting lots more. After 5 hours with Niall, we bid farewell. He is getting married to his Japanese girlfriend this year and is thinking about Melbourne for their honeymoon. He’s a sports nut so he’ll feel right at home. Cracking day. Got some suggestions from Niall around what to do on our last day here so we’ll come up with something tonight I’m sure. Cheers Willow & Lynda.