Tag Archives: Gion

A Day of Discovery

10 Oct

Thursday, being the Fourth Day of our trip, turned out to be a day of discovery. The itinerary was a mixture of Days One, Two, and Three, plus an unplanned destination, Uji, thrown in.

We took the train to Fushimi Inari Shrine, and it was crowded! We did not heed the advice to go early to avoid the crowd. Oh well. We spent only an hour there as we felt it was less peaceful than the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. The next stop was Uji, and we found this place to be delightful, like the Bamboo Forest.

Fushimi Inari Shrine

An early lunch fueled us and kept us going to discover more of Uji. I give this place a thumbs up! On impulse, we decided to go to Nara Park and Gion. Towards the end of the day, we had a lovely dinner in Pontocho.

Uji was peaceful and less crowded
Deers at Nara Park, Todai-ji Temple and Gion Shijo bridge
Dinner at En En

The day of discovery had us taking several trains and the bus. We even ended up on the wrong train on the way back from Gion! But we did not worry because we had Google Translate. Best app for travel in a foreign language country.

I guess sometimes it’s okay not to have a fixed agenda, as we improvised along the way. We ended up seeing and experiencing more. We left Kyoto with wonderful memories and headed to Osaka for the remainder of our days in Japan.