The incredible adventures of MissBenu - We like trains and Kyoto

I'm back from Japan and it was awsome but I'm also totally exhausted ^^. I don't recommand to do a round trip to Kyoto, Hiroshima and Osaka in one Week. You can't see as many as you wish and really often you fall asleep in the Shinkansen or are exhausted in the evening. But it was still awsome just trying.

So we arrived on the morning in Tokyo. Yay! We bought our Pasmo, a card where you can charge money for traveling with the train, subway and even pay with it at the selecta like  drinkes machine, and redeem our Railpass ^^ Thene we took the Train to Ueno and changed to the Asakusa Subway Line and drove until the Asakusa Station :) We walked to our Hostel. Actually we had to walk trough the area of the Senso-ji, an buddhist temple. It was a little bit hard with all our luggage but it was a very nice first impression of Japan :)

So we checked in in our Hostel and thene after a short break we were going to the district Ikebukuro. We searched for a mall called sunshin city. Where there was a Pokemon Center, a cat town and a lot of shopping possibilities.

We wanted to go to this cat town, because there was a ice cream stand with crazy flavours. So we paid our entrence,  it was like a small amusement park for kids in the mall. It was builed up like a town and every where was music and small niches. And also some sorte of playing automata. And also a lot of small candy shops. Where you can buy waffles, sweet pies and ice cream. There was a normal ice cream stand and an abnormal 8"D Why abnormal? Did you evef beef tounge or shark fin noodle? Yeah it taste like it sounds ^^'

We tried following flavours:

• Salt of Okhotsk (actually not so bad)
• Yamanashi peach sherbet (heaven *^*)
• Shark fin noodle (gosh I just need to read it and I nearly have to puke)
• Indian curry  (intressting)
• Beef tongue (bääh)
• Oyster (wtf? It taste strange but not fishy)
• Hokkaido Shirataki potato (Eeewww)
• Double cheese (taste ok I guess)
• Haskap and chocolate (another heaven in this hell)
• White Sesame (very intense, but if you like seasam you love it)
• Avocado Milk (you can eat it without making a face of disgust)
• Grilled eggplant (This is hell!)

           

It was a lot of fun trying out this stuff but some of them I shouldn't have eaten. I never ever can eat ice cream again withou getting remindet of this shark fin stuff xD Gosh was that gross ^^

After this experiment we went a little bit shopping and then going back to our hostel because tomorrow we had to wake up really early to catch the train for Kyoto.

Next morning we traveled to Tokyo Station. We had to change the subway. After we were out of the first subway one of us noted that she forgott her phone in the subway. We tried to find it and waited until the train was back to the station and tried to find it.  We couldn't find it but the station guard gave us the paper for the lost and found office. Then we tried to catch the next train to Kyoto.

Finally we managed to hopp on an Shikansen. We had to travell for 3 hours until we arrived in Kyoto. Well Kyoto looked a little bit different than Tokyo. More rural also the main public transport whas by bus. And the special thing about the busses where you don't pay the ticket in advance as you would do it in switzerland, but you pay whene you hopp off the bus. That was at first very confusing and we stand there a long time befor we found out that you could buy a day pass. So we bought it and then realized you pay afterwards. So we don't needed to buy this day pass but well lesson learned 8"D.
So we first tried to check in to our hostel, it tooked us some time to find it but it wasn't soo hard. It was a very nice one with an european flair you could say. Also they had a great chai latte *^* 

After we checked in and drank some coffea we were able to go to the fushiinari shrine. For me the absolute high light. I never saw a nother place who was so beautyfull nor peacefull. Especially the upper part, there weren't as many people as it was in the under area. Maybe because it was very exhausting to get up there in this humming weather and also the moskitos. 

The shrine itself is one of the oldest shinto shrines and is the head shrine of Inari. The Inari is the japanease kami (spirite) for fox, rice, tea, sake, industrye, agriculture and general prospertiy. So the many gates called torii are donated by japanease business.
It is very unusuall for a shinto shrine to show of the main idole object. In this case it is a mirror on the top of the mountain Inari.

Of course I went to the top of it. It was very beautiful but also extremely exhausting. I mean it was about 30° with I guess 75-80% humidity. So not the climate a european is familliar with. Well I made a lot of pictures who can speak for themself so I will let you enjoy the pictures for a while.