Kyoto

Dear Matthew and Toby

Our next stop on our Japanese adventure was Kyoto. We took another bullet train from the massive Tokyo station, arriving in Kyoto about 2.5 hours later. The bullet train rides came to be some of my favourite experiences while in Japan, just looking out the window at the countryside. Matt you would normally eat or watch your ipad and Tobes most of the time you would just fall asleep on me. I thought the trips were going to be one of our difficulties, but in fact they turned into some of my most precious memories.

Once we had arrived in Kyoto, we took a local train one stop to Tofukuji, and checked in to the ryokan that we would be staying at for the next four nights. I was so excited for this accommodation, as it's a traditional house, complete with tatami beds and beautiful rock garden. We couldn't get access to the house straight away though, so dumped our luggage and headed to what I think is the number one tourist attraction in Japan - Fushimi Inari-Taisha. This is a huge shrine to the god of rice, and is on a mountain covered by 10,000 torii gates. Suprisingly, we made it (maybe) halfway up before a toilet-stop prevented us going any further, but we got to enjoy a beautiful view over Kyoto and have some amazing photos with the gates. Tobes you loved all the stray cats on the mountain and Matt you were an absolute superstar climbing those thousands of stairs.

The next day we headed to Arashiyama, which is an area of Kyoto just outside of the main city. Here we explored the bamboo forest, beautiful gardens and climbed yet another mountain to the monkey forest. You both got to feed monkeys (Japanese Macaque) and we saw them walking around at the top of the mountain freely. It was very special. In the evening we walked around Nijo-ji castle back in Kyoto and went to the Fire Ramen restaurant, where our ramen was set on fire (both of you may have been a little scared but it was an amazing experience). Unfortunately I also managed to somehow get stung in the nose by a bee in the restaurant so we left pretty quickly, but that meant we could stop at a local playground before heading home.

The following day was the day you had most been looking forward to Matt- Legoland! We caught a bullet train to Nagoya for the day and you loved going on all the rides and buying a mountain load of lego. You have recently been obsessed with watching this show called 'Ryan's Toy Review' and it Ryan gets to go to Legoland with his family, so you felt extra special to be able to do the same rides that he did. My favourite part of the day were doing the fire engine ride as a family (and totally winning) and then going on the lego factory tour to learn how lego is made (as much as we could given it was in Japanese). I hope you remember this day forever Matt :)

Our last full day in Kyoto involved a trip to Nara, home of the world-famous deer that come down from the mountains during the day to be fed by tourists before returning at night. This is about an hour away from Kyoto and the day was surprisingly warm, but we took the train and headed up the hill to the deer. Both you boys loved feeding the deer, especially because we had been watching a documentary on wildlife in Japan before we left, so you both knew what it was going to be like (Toby you referred to the deer as 'DEER BISCUITS!!' because of the biscuits they are fed, and it was so cute). The deer are so well trained that they even bow before you give them biscuits! Tobes unfortunately one of them bucked you in the tummy after a while but you survived. We also visited the big buddha inside the world's oldest wooden structure (the buddha is over 50m high). In the afternoon we headed back to Kyoto, wandered through the Nishiki Markets where we sampled octopus and bought white strawberries, then headed through the traditional area of Gion where we saw old house and buildings and beautiful bridges (see the gorgeous photos below).

The next day we explored Nijo-jo Castle (on the inside this time). It's a beautiful 400 year old Castle that a shogun used to live in and had some amazing gardens, including trees with cherry blossoms in full bloom. We also visited an arcade that you enjoyed playing in Matt before jumping on the bullet train again for our next stop- Hiroshima!

Love you boys,

Mum xxx