We left our Machiya house in Kanazawa at 6am and were on our train to Kyoto by 7am! We took the train from Kanazawa to Tsuruga Station and then took the Thunderbird Limited Express toward Osaka, getting off in Kyoto at 9am.  By 9:30 we were pre-checked in to the hotel and stored our luggage.

 

After breakfast ramen we walked to Kyoto Station and took a quick glance at a Kirby pop-up shop they had there. Sadly it was very overpriced so we didn't get one of the cute plushies, ha ha. 

We then took the subway from Kyoto Station to Marutamachi Station, which is right outside the gardens. The space is fairly large at 1.3km long and .7km wide! I'm sure in the Spring you could spend a whole day wandering around. Since it was Winter there wasn't much to look at in the way of flowers and colorful trees.

The part of the gardens we enjoyed most was the Imperial Palace. We entered at the Seishomon Gate and, while admission is free, we went through a quick security check and were handed lanyards showing we were allowed to be inside. There are free guided tours but we opted for self-guided and used an app for audio descriptions of each of the locations within the palace. We arrived just after 11:45 and were on our way out at 12:30. It was a nice leisurely stroll through history.

The palace was the residence of the Emperor for ten centuries so it was pretty cool to walk through. The palace was rebuilt in 1855 after a fire and in 1869 the Imperial Palace was moved to Tokyo. Some buildings were removed to protect them from air raids in World War II, all the while the palace still being used for Enthronement Ceremonies of the Taisho and Showa Emperors. A number of buildings have been rebuilt or restored since then.

According to the official website, "in addition to its historical significance, this architectural complex, including the wall paintings and furnishings, exudes a refined and elegant beauty that harmonises with its gardens. They represent the pinnacle of Japanese culture in the picturesque ancient capital of Kyoto."

The Gonaitei Garden was particularly beautiful with all different types of trees and water features.

After the Imperial Palace and National Garden we decided to walk to Nijō Castle because it was going to be about the same amount of time as taking public transportation. We arrived just about 1pm. We had plans for later in the day so we opted to not enter Ninomaru Palace and bought tickets for the grounds only.  Our tickets were ¥800 each, if we wanted to go inside the palace it would have been an additioanl ¥500 per person.

There are tons of trees all along the path, many of which are cherry trees which bloom during April. We were a little too early for the plum orchard to be in bloom in February, but the grounds were beautiful nonetheless. The Japanese Sago Palm (cycads) trees were protected from the cold by covering the trunks of cycads with a sheet of rice straw called "Komo."

The Ninomaru Palace remains as it was since it was built in 1603 as the residence of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Edo Period. A shogun was the supreme military and political leader of Japan, appointed by the Emperor. The castle was designated a UNESCO world heritage site in 1994 and is one of the most well preserved for this period of architecture.

We walked up the base of the keep tower for a great view of the grounds and then headed back down to exit. We left around 1:43 and were at the train station by 1:48!

 

From Nijojo-mae station we headed to Karasuma Oike Station where we transferred to Karasuma Oike Station followed by Takeda Station where we changed trains to our final stop at Ogura Station. Once there we took a quick walk to...the Nintendo Museum!! 

This was one of the few things we pre-bought tickets for. I don't know how much longer they will sell tickets this way but in order to visit we had to enter a lottery to buy tickets. They release them one month blocks at a time. On October 24th we entered the lottery for 3 different times on January 22nd. We each joined the lottery and hoped one of us would be chosen. On November 1st we got the emails that neither of us were chosen. This meant we had to wait and hope that there would still be leftover tickets after those chosen in the lottery bought theirs. I did some searching on Reddit to see when tickets may appear. The consensus was that lottery winners had about two weeks to purchase their tickets and any leftovers would be made public. On November 13th I checked the website and they were available! So I quickly went through the checkout process and snagged tickets for January 22nd with a 3pm entry time. Our tickets were ¥6600 for both of us.

We arrived at 2:35 and got in line for the 3pm entry. They let us in a few minutes early and after going through security and getting our printed tickets it was 2:51 and we were officially inside the grounds! Photos are not allowed in the main exhibit but there are plenty of fun photo opportunities along the way and one area inside that you're allowed to take photos. 

Those of you that know Christian know he is a HUGE video game lover. He has been obsessed his whole life and particularly loves Nintendo games. So this was a big deal for him and he was so excited! The museum is full of old artifacts from Nintendos history so he literally could have spent all day here. We got in to the main area around 3:08 and he spent about an hour looking at every single thing. My back and feet were killing me so I had to sit down for most of that time and felt bad he couldn't share some of his favorite things with me, but I was in so much pain. Struggles of doing a 2 week long, intense sight-seeing trip. 

After going through the exhibits we went to the Museum store. Sadly it was mostly museum branded merchandise and not much general gaming stuff. I can't remember what he bought but it was something pretty small just to commemorate the day. Then it was time for food so we headed to the Hatena Burger restaurant!

By 8:30 we were back at the hotel and ready to rest!

 

Christian and I thought we were being smart and decided to get ramen for breakfast because a place on my list was around the corner from our hotel. We left the hotel at 9:30am and got to the ramen shop just before 9:35 and there was already a line!!! The shop opened at 6am and we figured it would be a little less crowded at breakfast time, but we were wrong. I was tired of not eating at places I had found so we decided to wait. It took 45 minutes for us to be seated in the very small shop (we sat at 10:17.) 

As we got closer to the front of the line one of the employees came out to let people know to order from the kiosk inside the restaurant in order to be seated in a more timely fashion. So Christian went inside to wait and order our ramen, then came back out into our spot in line. Then we waited for our turn to get in.

There were 6 or 7 tables as well as "bar" seating. The tables had drawers so we could grab our own chopsticks and spoons and paper towel dispensers on the wall. Since we already ordered all we had to do was wait for them to bring out our ramen and gyoza! 10 minutes later the bowls were placed in front of us. Boy was it worth the wait, it was definitely the best ramen we had on the trip, loaded with kujonegi (scallions) and pork. The broth was full of soy and pork flavor. YUM! And the potstickers were equally delicious. Crispy and flavorful. The gyoza were ¥320 and each bowl of special ramen was ¥1180. Once converted we only paid $15.73 for the both of us!

 

Once Christian had taken in everything at the Nintendo Museum we were starved! We popped into Hatena Burger to make some custom hamburgers. There was a big line when we got there at 4:23 but we only waited about 10 minutes to order. By 4:38 we had our food!

The custom burgers let you pick a bun, patty, 3 toppings and a sauce. I made a custom burger with a sweet potato bun, beef patty, Japanese pickles, onions and green onions. Christian ordered a Wasabi Beef Burger which was a beef patty with wasabi garlic soy sauce. We got a Pepsi and Nacchan Orange soda to share as well as potato puffs and chocolate sweet bread for dessert. Our total was $29.08.

 

Onyado Nono Kyoto was only a 6 minute walk to Kyoto Station, very convenient for our stay. Our reservation also came with a continental breakfast each morning. It had indoor hot springs but we didn't use them during our stay, they seemed very popular though. The room had some nice traditional touches like tatami mat floors and pretty window shades. Because of the tatami floors we had to store our sneakers in lockers when entering the hotel and walk around in socks or provided slippers. They were also able to store our luggage before check-in and after check-out so we could still sightsee when our room wasn't available.  We paid $288 for 2 nights, including breakfast on 2 mornings! Funnily enough this was our cheapest accommodation per night, even with paying for breakfast!

 

 

We left the hotel around 8:15am after a delicious breakfast to journey to Fushimi Inari Shrine! We arrived just before 8:40am, which was a little later than we had planned but we were tired and needed some extra sleep, ha ha. Luckily for us the shrine was still fairly empty at this hour. 

Inari is the god of rice and sake. There are many foxes (kitsune) all over the shrine and they are said to be Inari's messengers. Fushimi Inari is one of the most famous tourist sights in Kyoto and while many say it's overly crowded we were very glad we went (and went early.) The shrine is open 24 hours a day and it is best to go in the early morning or late evening to avoid the crowds. 

Vermilion red is the main color you'll see on all the buildings and torii gates. The color is considered an amulet against evil forces, and is used in many ancient palaces, shrines and temples. At Fushimi Inari Taisha, it is described as a color that expresses bountiful harvests that Inari Okami gives the people. The higher you go the less people you'll encounter. It supposedly takes 2-3 hours to go from the start of the mountain to the top and back down. Once again, ending our trip here meant that we were a little too tired to hike very high. 

There are around 10,000 vermilion torii gates throughout the whole area, winding up and down Mount Inari. Each torii gate was donated by an individual or a company. According to Japan-Guide.com the donation amount starts around ¥400,000 (~$2600) for a smaller gate and increases to over one million yen (~$6600) for a large gate. 

We only stayed about an hour and crowds were starting to grow by the time we were heading back to the train station. We got to our platform to leave around 9:45 just as a train was on the arrival platform and it was FULL of people. We were very glad we arrived on the earlier side.

 

 

 

We were down from our room for breakfast at 7:30am. We were shown to a table and then went up to the buffet to grab lots of food! The first station was more traditional Japanese breakfast foods like soups, raw fish, tonkatsu, various meats, etc. After rounding a corner we found some fruit, waffles, pastries and salads. The final row of food was eggs, sausages, soups and desserts. We grabbed a bit of everything to try. 

 

 

We spent the morning going to Nara to see the bowing deer, headed back to Kyoto for lunch and then grabbed our luggage and took the train back to Tokyo. We were originally going to spend some more time in Kyoto but being the last full day of our trip we were really wiped out. So instead we grabbed a 2:30pm Shinkansen back to Tokyo and arrived at our final hotel just before 5pm. We even got one last little peek at Mt. Fuji from the train!

 

Before checking out of the hotel we had a quick breakfast at 7:30am. We knew exactly what we wanted to eat after trying a selection the day before so this time we just gabbed what we enjoyed. 

We got to Kyoto Station at 12:30 and were STARVING. We started looking around the station while making our way out to find food and stumbled upon Spicy Masara in front of some escalators leading to the station exit. Christian hadn't had a lot of curry yet so this was the perfect place to stop!

This was another place where you order on a machine at the entrance of the restaurant to get a ticket and then you sit down and wait to be served. It was a small shop and we at at the bar where we were able to watch them cook the food. We spent a whopping $12.78 on 2 meals and a soda! Christian had the pork cutlet curry (¥810) and I had chicken breast curry (¥790.) I had to specify breast here because most restaurants in Japan serve chicken thighs, it was rare to see white meat, which I prefer.