5 days 4 Night Kyoto Itinerary (D3 and D4)

Here we go!! Continuing to the second part of my Kyoto Trip! For the next two days, my itinerary is down below.

Day 3

Kinkakuji

Ryoanji

Arashiyama : Tenryu-ji, Bamboo Path, Togetsukyo bridge

Day 4

Fushimi Inari Taisha

Nara: Todaiji, Kasuga Taisha, Heijo Palace

Starting our day 3, again by bus we went to Kinkakuji for around 40 min.

Literally there’s nothing there except the beautiful golden pavilion of Kinkakuji. The weather was nice at that time.

From Kinkakuji, we went to Ryoanji by walking for around 15 minutes I think, a temple that is famous for its zen garden. A little bit disappointed, because we expect a much bigger garden while in reality it’s quite small. So much for an expectation huh. But I love how they set the garden just beside a classic traditional Japanese tatami room. Unfortunately they forbid us to stepped in.

Finish with Ryoanji, the most exciting travel part begin!! We walk from Ryoanji to the nearest station for Keifuku Railways and from there we went directly to Arashiyama. The station was so in-the-middle-of-nowhere. I like that kind of feeling, contrast with the over-crowded ambience of Tokyo. Why everyone go to Tokyo?? Why?? The train has a very antique ambiance also.

Arashiyama is known for its bamboo path. Even when we reach Arashiyama station, it’s all bamboo nuances.

From station we directly go to the Tenryuji.

And on the back of the Tenryuji, is the bamboo path that I’ve been wanting to go to!!! It’s been ages since I really want to go here!! Took a lot of selfie here but of course I cannot post all what...

Finish with the temples and bamboo path, we kinda just strolling around Arashiyama. It was very exciting since along the road there are so much omiyage shop (souvenir shop) so we shopped there quite a lot, to bring back to Tokyo.

We ate yudoufu too, boiled tofu, the special dish of Kyoto..

See fake Geisha.. Usually its tourist dressed up as geisha. We know it’s fake because we have seen the REAL ONE and the big difference is how they walk. One see and you will know hahahaha. Real geisha take small tiny angelic step, like they were flying while walking. These two... never mind ah.

I saw one store I think, offering Geisha makeup, clothes rental + photo studio + 1 day experience as Geisha for around 12.000 yen until 20.000 yen depends on the clothes I think?? But so expensive wtf I cannot even...

Okay. We continue to walk along infamous Togetsukyo bridge..

Take photos with the yatsuhashi (famous Kyoto omiyage) iconic lady, Yuko.

Accepted the fact that we were quite exhausted at that time (all the tiredness accumulated from the first day), we went back quite fast for that day and had a somewhat simple beer party at our hotel. We slept early because the next day will be a heavier journey to Nara. Yay!

And that’s the end of our third day!

Our fourth day, as mentioned before, we went quite far from Kyoto. We went until Nara. However in the middle, we visited Fushimi Inari Taisha that is famous for its 1000 red gate along the mountain (it’s like one way to Nara, but this temple is our top priority too).

This place is one of my bucket list of my life. Since I saw the movie, memoirs of a Geisha, I really want to visit this place. This is the photos from the main gate, the beginning of the 1000 red gate and the red gates itself.

It seems that the sacred God in here is a fox God or something. They have foxes statues everywhere. Even the wish-plate is fox head shape! So cute! We brought the wish-plate for 500 yen here, wrote our wish on the back of this fox-shaped wood plate and decorate the fox faces as creative as possible! Everyone fox is different it was so unique.

Finish with Fushimi Inari Taisha, didn’t want to waste time we went straight away for Nara. Nara is famous for its wild but friendly deer all over the place!

We went to Toudaiji Temple in Nara. SOOOOOOO HUGEEEEE see the human and building ratio wtf

And another temple nearby called Kasuga Taisha.

After that we went by bus to a site called Heijo Palace. This is a palace that was used as a headquarters for several years when Nara was still the center of government before they moved it to Tokyo. This palace site is so big, you can see from the photo I took. The first photo is the main gate, and the 2 next is the main castle from faraway and closer look. It took around 10 minutes more to walk from main gate the main castle.

We take a little sneak peek inside the palace and I took photos from the palace veranda.

A site guide told us that long ago, between the main gate and main castle, there used to be a lot of buildings that supported the castle, making it one big castle site. However due to earthquake or renovation or something (FORGOT..man...), they lost it and only maintain the two main buildings, the gate and the castle itself. It’s very… majestic.

I can say Kudos to all the temples (and castles) in Nara. The magnificent level is out of mind, especially Todaiji Temple is so frickin big even it’s so hard to fit it on one camera screen. However one of the inconveniences is the transportation system is somewhat worse than Kyoto, so mostly we walk from one place to another. But that’s still fine because while we walk, we enjoy all the scenery and calm ambience of Kyoto that can never be found in Tokyo.

And Nara summed up my fourth day of Kyoto trip. Time so fast flying, and that night we start packaging and have this unneeded mellow feeling that our holiday is soon coming to an end… This mellow yet satisfied feeling. How to say?

However see you on part three soon! I will tell you about my overall budget plus several tips too!! Hope it will be worth it!!

And if you want to read the other 2 post related to this Kyoto trip, here are the part 1 and part 3.

5 days 4 Night Kyoto Itinerary (D1 and D2)

I know this is rather late, but I really want to post about my 5D4N itinerary of Kyoto last year. It was such a great trip and I can't wait to go there once again if I have the time to. It was such a long time ago so I might be forgetting several details like name of places, prices etc, however I will try to write this as informative and as fun as I can!

This is the simple list of my two days itinerary.

Day 1

Higashi Honganji Temple

Nishi Honganji Temple

Nijo-jo

Yasaka Shrine

Gion (Shirokawa Area)

Day 2

Sanjusangendo Temple

Kiyomizu Dera

Nene no Michi

Ginkakuji

Philosopher’s Path

Nanzenji

Gion (Hanakimozawa Area)

Here I am starting for the flow of day 1 in Kyoto!

From Tokyo to Kyoto, me and my other 2 friends took a night bus from Yoyogi station from around 00.00 am and stop directly at Kyoto Station in the morning around 07.00. The exciting thing about taking the bus is, the bus has to stop several times to have a rest, and one of the resting area is around Fuji Mountain! But I didn't drop off from the bus to explore at that time because it's still so cold I cannot take it. Even when we reach Kyoto, it's still freezing!

First time seeing Kyoto tower from the Kyoto station, take selfies.

After we checked in and dropped our baggage at hotel, we directly go out. Our hotel is only around 10 min walk from the station. Very strategic and got several convenience store around too. What’s fun about my hotel is, they even have this recommended itinerary around Kyoto!

 And we mostly follow this itinerary even though we skipped some unimportant part of it.

The boys planning the journey.

Because it’s our first day, we decided just to explore nearby first. So we tried to go to two temples, Higashi and Nishi Honganji temples. These two temples resemble each other, I say.

After that we went to Nijo-jo, the famous castle that were completed during the reign of Tokugawa Iemitsu. It’s so massive and glorious wtf I'm so speechless. Photo can’t capture it’s glory. Go see yourself for maximum awesomeness hahaha.

I remember we need to take train from Kyoto Station to Nijo-jo Mae Station and have to walk a little bit to reach the front gate.

Satisfied with Nijo-Jo, time flied and it’s around four already So we went straight to Gion area by taking train back to Kyoto station and take the bus to the front of Yasaka Shrine.

From Yasaka Shrine, we walked around Gion and ate yummy traditional desserts! We just visit random interesting dessert shop because we were quite hungry at that time, but not a dinner time yet.. so, snack it is. And we didn't regret it. It cost us around 3.500 yen only for these three glorious dessert!

And not to forget we hunt for Geisha too!! And i can say we kind of fortunate because we saw (to be exact, peeking from window) 2 geishas at one of the restaurant across the river doing their job, customer service and entertaining.. It’s on the second floor on one of these several buildings below. So exciting! !

Andddd that is the end of our day 1. Quite exciting since It’s still the beginning. Feel quite tired, we went back to hotel and getting ready for the second day.

For the second day, because we traveled mostly by bus for the whole day, we brought 500 yen all day bus pass. Oh, and we always start our day around 07.00, breakfast and etc so we can just go to the destination around 09.00. Because in Kyoto, most of the temples usually closed around 16.00 or 17.00, so If your itinerary mostly are temples, you ought to finish it before 16.00, at minimum.

First destination, Sanjusangendo Temple. Massive. Undescribable. Open and clear sky above long structured building. Holy Moly. Something I definitely cannot see in Tokyo.

We went inside the temple too. Satisfied with taking photos, went straight to Kiyomizu Dera by bus from bus station nearby. Kiyomizu Dera was exciting too! Got so many shops that sells food and stuffs on the way to the temple itself.

I remember we got so many distractions at that time. We stopped at several shops, ate several snacks such as matcha ice cream, meat bun, cream puff on our way to and back from Kiyomizu Dera. The temple itself was very breathtaking!

And there’s this “love rock” that said that if somebody can walk from one stone to the other (got two stones) with closed eyes without stumbled with other person, they can find their true love.

Hahahahhaa quite bullsh*t I think, since the space between those two rocks is so far and the spot is so crowded!! Even with both eyes open I crash several person wtf. But however it’s fun. So many love charm being sold too!

From Kiyomizu Dera, we ate our lunch around that area. After lunch we decided to walk to Nene no Michi (Nene’s Road) that’s very famous for its scenery. Got a lot of cute traditional shops too there.

But I don’t know why we three found it very boring and decided to just went off to the next destination, Ginkakuji, by bus again.

The main pathway, so ninja. That's our first reaction seeing this tall plant wall here. So synchronized hahaha

And from there they got several stone art garden as an opening "show", keep following the road and we will find Ginkakuji near the end of the road.

The scenery itself was so calming. If minus all the crowd, it would be more perfect..

From Ginkakuji, we went out and walked directly to another recommended spot, philosopher’s path. They say this road a philosopher's path because there's once a (famous?) Japanese philosopher that used to walk here everyday. And the rest of the story, i don't know ver well I'm sorry. However, again, after we walked a little bit, found it quite boring. 

And suddenly I knew what's wrong. We went there not at the very right time I guess. It’s around end winter so no leaves, no flowers (where it supposed to be full of cherry blossoms everywhere in Kyoto around April) and quite booboo. So without all the flowers, it's not quite attractive, and rather cold. But on the other hand, it wasn't a peak season thus not crowded and we can enjoy the peacefulness more.

From there we kinda run to Nanzenji Temple nearby only to find that It has been closed already L At least I can took several photos even though only the main gate.

Why the hell all the temples in Kyoto is so massive???? Unbelievable.

Finish with all the temples, we went back again to around Gion area and explore more of the shopping areas and geisha hunting. We ate yakiniku buffet too there! What's  awesome about Gion is here's this side of "vintage Japan" and "modern Japan" that contrast each other!

We glad we took a little bit more time to explore Gion. And the best part is!! Finally we found a real geisha walking in front of our eyes!! She walked so fast and so shy I cannot even took photos of her. We found her when we walked a small path in the middle of nowhere, so it was kinda unexpected. Can't even prepare for camera. Several random tourist just stare in awe of her, cannot do anything, so shocked and stunned from awesomeness. So funny!!

However, conclusion for day 2, awesooooome. So much better than first day. Great travel good food. There’s nothing can beat that. 

Alrighty! Posting next day itinerary soon!

(continue to part 2)

And if you want to read the other 2 post related to this Kyoto trip, here are the part 2 and part 3.