Japan Day 5: Kyoto

We woke up bright and early on Tuesday to start our trip to Kyoto. We took the shinkansen, which was pretty awesome. The trip took us about 2.5 hours and would have been 8-10 by bus, and the train was very spacious and comfortable. Also, we had some stunningly clear views of Mt. Fuji on the way (credit to Bryan for the photo):

At Kyoto station, we hopped on a free shuttle to our hotel, which was nestled at the foot of the eastern hills. We chose a Japanese-style three person room and it was gorgeous.

We slept on very comfortable futons on the floor, which I unfortunately don't have pictures of. The grounds surrounding the room were also amazing:

There was a bird-watching trail nearby, but we saw a sign warning about wasps in the area, so we decided against it. Japan has giant hornets that really are giant and also quite dangerous. I actually saw a few later in the day, so I’m glad I decided against a morning walk in the woods!

We were very hungry at this point, so we went to a local udon restaurant that specialized in local veggie ingredients. The soup tasted very fresh and light and was a great introduction to Kyoto food. The sun was nearly setting by this point, but we did manage to walk to up Nanzenji temple to see some stunning fall colors and cool old buildings.

Afterwards, we went down to the Gion Shijo area to do some shopping and wandering. 

We stumbled upon a very tiny old alley and had a lot of fun exploring (I believe this is Pontocho Alley):

This area has many actively working geisha, and we managed to spot one or two shuffling between buildings in their full make-up and elaborate outfit. 

In Kyoto, a popular dining option is a kaiseki meal, which entails an elaborate multi-course presentation featuring locally grown/caught food. Our hotel helped us make a reservation at a small family-owned kaiseki restaurant in the area, so we headed over to start our meal. As is common at these types of places, we were given a private Japanese-style room:

They bring each course one at a time, along with an explanation of each ingredient. I won't post all of the pictures I took, but here are some highlights:

The food was incredible and well worth the price. The meal took about 2.5 hours, so we didn't have much of a night left afterwards. We wandered around the area for a while after, and managed to find ourselves in the red light district (in fact, we stumbled upon the red light district of every city we were in, which was pretty frustrating). We made our way back to the hotel to get some rest on the comfy futons that had been set up for us.