​Weekend in Kyoto

After a few weekends in Tokyo, I decided it was time to see Kyoto. After speaking to a few friends about my trip to Japan, many told me that I could not go to Japan and not see Kyoto, so I took their advice and ventured off to Kyoto for the weekend.

In Kyoto I visited several shrines and temples, the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, a monkey park, and ate unami, all while managing to still make it on time to my Shinkansen on Sunday evening.  

Kyoto is definitely the opposite of the busy city that Tokyo is and personally, I would pick Tokyo over Kyoto. Kyoto is a more traditional city filled with temples and shrines.

The highlight of this trip was definitely visiting the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine and making my way up to the top of the mountain to see all of the smaller shrines that span the 2.5-mile path. All along the path, you can see the beautiful red torii gates of different sizes that have been donated by different Japanese companies to bring good wealth to their businesses. The larger the torii, the more money the company donated. The hike up the mountain took roughly two hours and it was definitely not a walk in the park. Most of the hike is composed of stairs, which makes this for a great workout! 
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