Kyoto for a day

So last weekend I headed up to Kyoto for one day.  A single day -- yes, that's all.  A cousin was visiting Japan and happened to be in Kyoto on the weekend, so at her request, I headed up there to meet with her and the friend she was travelling with for the afternoon.

My day started with an adventure first thing in the morning! I had gotten up early to catch an early bus to Kyoto (it takes about 3h40m to get there from Takamatsu), but when I got to the bus terminal closest to where I live, I was given the surprise of finding out that the ticket office isn't open that early and you can't buy tickets for Kyoto from the ticket vending machine at that location.  Excellent.  So, instead, I had to make my way down to Takamatsu station to the main bus terminal, and had to catch the next bus (which was about an hour later than the one I'd planned to take).

Eventually I got to Kyoto, and with only a little bit of time to spare before the cousin's train arrived, I scoped out the station (it's been a while since I've been there) to look for potential places for lunch.

Who knew the stairs at Kyoto Station lit up at night and do a little light show?

Once I met up with my cousin and her friend, we went for lunch, got them to their hotel and then wandered around for a bit in the area where their hotel was -- being Kyoto, we of course came across a few temples, which the friend took pictures of.  After that, they had to leave as they had a tour scheduled, giving me some free time before I decided to hunt for a place for supper before catching the last bus out of Kyoto in the evening. 

One of the shrines we wandered through the grounds of

I ended up going to Fushimi Inari Shrine (the shrine with THOUSANDS of torii gates) because I wanted to go through the whole thing (the last time I was there I didn't get to see much as I was with a group on a limited time schedule).  So I trekked my way up to the very top and back down and around.  It took just over an hour to do the entire course, but it was a little bit brutal because it was so HOT!

Yep, did the whole thing this time, not just the little bottom portion!

 

 

Lots and lots of torii gates everywhere

 

Cute little kitten!

 

To see some more pictures of some nice torii gates at Fushimi Inari, click here.

After a quick dinner, I hopped on the last bus which made it back to Takamatsu by about 10:30, and that was my whirlwind day trip to Kyoto (the main reason why I didn't stay for Sunday too was because for whatever reason, there were absolutely NO hotels available for the Saturday night, so there you have it).