We could not come to Japan and not experience the religious side of the country. Koya-san was thus the perfect destination to escape the city and retire (at least for one day!) in a buddhist temple to live with the monks on the top of a holly mountain. The route to Koya-san from Kyoto is pretty easy: first you catch a Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka (14 minutes), then connect with the subway (Midosuji Line) to Namba station (15 minutes), the second largest train stati...

For this second day in Kyoto, the weather had decided to be gentle and quite sunny. After visiting some of the major temples on the north-western part of the city the day before (but not all of them, we'll come back to that later on), we decided to focus on the easter side of Kyoto, naming Higashiyama. But before that, we had to move in our new hostel. Actually, while preparing our trip to Japan from France and making the hotels reservations (especially using th...

Today is the day.... when we are on our own in Japan! First destination: Kyoto. The journey in TX to Tokyo was a piece of cake, in spite of the rush hour. We managed to board the Hikari Shinkansen without any problem, found 2 seats on the right side of the coach as N. suggested in order to admire Mount Fuji on the way ; so we did! After 2 hours and a half, we reached Kyoto station under a grey sky. A quick stop at the tourist information center (right in the sta...

This is not a japanese phrase, but a summary of our day! According to the plan we imagined, we were supposed to go to Nikko today, but the weather forecast was terrible : heavy rain on Nikko, becoming snow in late afternoon… We thus decided to change plans, and postpone our trip to Nikko to the end of our stay in Japan. Instead, we headed to Tokyo again, a never-ending interesting city! Considering the weather, we decided to go for inside activities, and t...

Wake up at noon after the party in Roppongi the night before. A very nice brunch was awaiting for us, made of "crêpes", eggs, yakult ad so on... The weather was not so nice during the afternoon. But we needed some fresh air anyway, so we headed to the agriculture science center in Tsukuba. All the buildings there are surrounded by sakuras, and many people had the same idea as ours making the roads very busy: a Champs-Elysées-like feeling, but much nice...