Japan: Kyoto Recap

Again, since I was a terrible daily blogger, this is going to be a recap of Kyoto.  I loved Kyoto.  The last time we went to Japan, we only went to Tokyo (and climbed Mt. Fuji) so I never got to see this side of Kyoto so I was really looking forward to it.  It was peaceful and gorgeous in it's own calm, zen type of way.  Here's what we saw:

We actually didn't stay in Kyoto, we stayed at an AirBnb in Osaka and just took the train into Kyoto for a few days.  It's a short train ride and that way we wouldn't have to move our stuff unnecessarily.  In the pic below, Will is asking for directions about which train to take.  This machine was super cool because you could speak to someone live (in English!) and there was a little camera where you could show them your ticket and they could see it and let you know if you had the right kind of ticket.  The Japanese railway is complicated so I thought this was a cool way to help in less busy stations where there weren't as many workers present.  First stop, lunch!

Then we went to the Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine.  This place was HUGE and there was lots of hiking/walking in the heat.  It looked really cool because of all of the red columns!

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Then we stopped by the Kennin-ji Temple Hojo

Then we walked around Gion where the geishas live and practice.  While we didn't see one, apparently it is common to see them and there are even signs explaining etiquette about not bothering them.  

We made some stops for snacks, of course, like this matcha cafe.

 

 We also went to this special ice cream place that was pretty tasty!

On a different day, we went to Iwatayama Monkey Park which is basically a park on top of a hill where these monkeys just naturally live.  They're not in enclosed cages or anything but there is staff on hand to watch the monkeys and make sure tourists don't bother them.  They also sell food but you have to feed them from inside a little hut (through a fence).  You definitely can't feed them out in the open or they would attack you!  The staff did a good job informing people not to ever feed them outside of the hut because when you were out in the open with them, none of the monkeys bothered you or were expecting any food. 

Afterwards we went to lunch before heading to the Arishiyama Bamboo Forest which was smaller than you'd expect but so gorgeous!

After that, we made our way back to the train to go to the more residential part of Kyoto where there was a PUG CAFE!! While cafe culture is big in Japan, we had never heard of a pug cafe so we had to go to it while we were in town!  It was the cutest thing you've ever seen.  You basically just pay to hang out with pugs!! 

 The pug cafe was pretty amazing!! They were all so cute and sweet and REALLY love their treats.  I guess what pug (including my own) doesn't love treats?? We were so lucky that we stumbled upon the only pug cafe we had ever heard of, all the way in Kyoto, Japan!