After a few hours of sleep at the capsule hotel, I caught the early train to the airport to meet Larissa. She’d just finished four weeks in Thailand and Vietnam and decided to spend a week layover in Japan before flying back to Canada. We met at the airport, with her still groggy and tired from her red-eye flight, and took the express train back to Tokyo. After a brief incident where I had to retrieve my bag from a locker and missed our scheduled train, we caught the next Shinkansen (bullet train) down to Kyoto.

The next three days were spent exploring Kyoto and sweating it out in the muggy 30°C weather. It was Larissa’s first time to Japan so I taught her a bit of Japanese, Japanese culture and, of course, introduced her to Japanese cuisine. We had a relaxing time in Kyoto, took our time, didn't set out until the early afternoon each day, and went to nowhere in particular. We wandered the sunny streets as it rained, saw Nijo-jo and the Shogun’s palace, walked through the amazing maze of street arcades in the trendy Pontocho district, saw geisha walking along in their vibrant Kimono in Gion, took in the illuminating night lanterns of Yasaka shrine, walked through the endless red Torii gates at the Fushimi-inari shrine, and drank in the healing waters at Kiyomizudera. We had Purikura taken (no trip in Japan is complete without doing Purikura), played Taiko drums at the arcade, ate okonomiyaki, kaitenzushi, ramen, takoyaki, soba, and McDonald’s shrimp burgers, photographed plastic food and colossal parfaits, hugged mascots, and spent a lot of time walking and chatting.

My favorite part of Kyoto was actually the day trip out to Nara, a city 40 minutes from Kyoto. In the center of the city is a huge national park that has numerous UNESCO World Heritage Site temples and Todaiji, the largest wooden building in the world, which houses the biggest Buddha statue in Japan. The main attractions are the deer that roam freely throughout the park, hoping to be fed deer cookies by passing tourists. They’re designated national treasures and have gotten so used to humans they don’t mind being pet, or (if you happen to be holding deer cookies), nibbling at your clothes and poking you with their antlers! We wandered around the park for an entire day, saw the impressive giant Buddha, crawled through tiny holes in temple pillars, walked through moss-ridden temples, watched ponds full of turtles, tried an earthquake simulator, fed the deer, and relaxed in the park. When night fell, we happened to catch the second-last night of a lantern festival where they lit up the park paths with candle lanterns. By the lake there were candles surrounding the lake, a candle-lit gazebo, floating rowboats with glowing paper lanterns, and a full moon in the sky. It was absolutely beautiful out so we spent half an hour there enjoying the night scenery. Any trip to Kyoto wouldn’t be complete without a trip to Nara and was probably, for me, the highlight of my entire trip.

The next day we went to Kyoto station for our second dose of kaitenzushi (and her first taste of natto) before I caught my flight back to Sapporo for a wedding the following day. As with Tokyo, three days was definitely not enough time to fully explore Kyoto (I didn’t get to see any Japanese gardens or Noh plays!). Once I finish on the JET Programme, I’ll spend a month traveling around Japan and make down to Hiroshima to get my fill of Japanese culture before I leave, including a trip back to Kyoto to wander about more.