while you're ahead…

Kyoto is magical. President Truman, when choosing a target for the first atomic bomb discarded Kyoto because he’d spent his honeymoon there and loved it so much. It was for century the old capital of Japan (before to move to Tokyo a couple of century ago. It houses 1700 temples and shrines. It will capture your heart.

We arrived in a monsoon after a quick train ride from Hiroshima and whilst the boys and Mr M settled in the hotel I felt I had to get out and ‘breath the local air’. Of course I got totally soaked on my way to the Tokyo National Museum but nobody seem to mind that my shoes squelched around the halls, I wasn’t alone. It’s a gorgeous museum, not big like it could have been, apparently they have millions of pieces, because they rotate the exhibition a few times a year, so in an hour or so you can walk around the 6 vast rooms listening to the audioguide and have a good idea about statues, pottery, ancient objects, old manuscripts, textiles and paintings. A great and instructive overview that almost leaves you wanting fore more and so, if you had the chance, would definitively go back again… So clever. If you’ve lost the will to live at the louvre for example you know exactly what I mean.

When I left, still with wet feet and dripping trousers, I decided to take the long way back to the hotel… and kind of got lost… kind of… but it was so much fun, so many things to see…

I knew exactly what I wanted to see first in Kyoto, the Fushimi Inari Shrine… in my list of things to see since like forever… it had captured my imagination since I saw it on an ancient National Geographic magazine back in the day when I couldn’t speak English… I didn’t know what it was then but I had massive butterfly when we started off in the morning. Our hotel suggested getting there at 7 and then get back for breakfast and it was such a good idea… we were literally amongst the first ones there and it was ‘goosebumpy’. Yes, it’s a word.

Forgive me the photo vomit…

… and then we went back to the hotel for breakfast. Still pinching myself.