April 27 2012, Last full day in Kyoto

Today we experienced uninterrupted sunshine and clear blue skies all day - the first time this has happened since Vietnam. We started the day by exploring the railway station that our hotel is part of. Doesn't sound very exciting, I know, but it's an amazing place. From the central councourse there are banks of escalators on each side that go up and up and up until you reach roof gardens and walkways at the top - 16 floors up.



See the escalators just to the right of centre? They go all the way up to the sunlight at top centre...

...where you find this roof garden.

There are shops and cafes all the way up on both sides - quite a place!

After one of our customary coffee stops we headed of on a train to find the "Philosopher's Walk" on the eastern edge of Kyoto. This is a lovely tree-lined walk, maybe a mile long, and would have been even better two or three weeks ago, but we still managed to find some blossom and some beautiful Japanese maples.

We were determined to eat a proper Japanese meal on our last evening here, so we took the advice of the concierge and ended up back in Pontocho Alley. The restaurant was called Yoshina, but we knew that we wouldn't find that written in our alphabet, so we went armed with the name in Japanese characters and looked until we found it. You would never know that it was a restaurant from the outside. There were just three pieces of cloth hanging across the entrance to an alleyway. The central cloth carried the name of the restaurant, so we walked through until we came to a wooden sliding door.No sign of life, but we entered anyway and were given a warm welcome. We removed our shoes and were shown to an upstairs dining room. The table was very low, but there was a kind of pit underneath it so that you could sit at the table without having to kneel on the floor. The food was lovely, served by a waitress who did have to kneel in order to serve us, and we thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

Tomorrow morning we are on the 10.00am bullet train to Tokyo (2 hours 10 mins approx), then about 50 mins on the airport express to Narita Airport, then an 8 hour flight to Vancouver. Crossing the international date line will mean that we arrive in Vancouver at 10.30am tomrrow (same day!). We then have to last the day until the 5.25pm Amtrak Train down to Seattle, where we can collapse into bed. The good news is that we are meeting Kim and her husband at Vancouver Airport, so we can dump our bags in their son's car, go and have lunch with them, and then cadge a lift to the railway station, which will make the day a lot easier.

Goodbye Asia!

Jen's bit: Kyoto has been one of my favourite places so far, on one level everything seems so easy - transport, sightseeing, shopping, eating, but on another I feel I don't have a clue what is happening, there's a whole social life going on and I can't get the hang of it at all. Very interesting. Will endeavour to  find out more when we get home ... Jx