Spring Vacation: A Trip to Tokyo and Kyoto.

About two weeks ago myself and James were loosed from our obligations at the Toya branch office and given two weeks to do whatever we wanted. Since arriving in Japan we had set aside Spring for visiting Kyoto mainly because Spring is the best time to visit Japan as it’s when the cherry blossoms come into full bloom and Kyoto is quintessential Japan. With a fresh four foot of snow having fallen on Toya the night before we eagerly packed our bags and thought “Hah! Fuck that!” as we left the Sub-Arctic temperatures and mountains of snow behind.

Our last day in Toya before the break

I soon found myself boarding a plane and initiating the time old tradition of convincing myself I was going to die by reliving every episode of “Air Crash Investigations” in my mind, constantly imagining what would happen if the floor of the plane just disappeared beneath my feet and telling myself that the overweight man sitting next to me would probably be squishy enough to break my hypothetical, five thousand foot fall. Despite my twisted fantasies though all was well and we soon disembarked in Osaka airport and made our way to Kyoto. The first thing that struck us was the lack of snow and the mild temperature. Although it was only about 10-15 degrees Celsius we had just come from a place where in the space of time it would take you to take off your gloves, take out your I-Pod, change the song, and put your gloves back on, your hands would have gone painfully numb. So as you can imagine, we felt like we had landed in a tropical paradise. After meeting up with the Kyoto volunteers and checking into our Ryokan (Japanese style hostel) we hashed out our plans for the week. Now normally I’m not a hyper tourist maniac that goes around to all the sights. I usually go into holidays hoping for a strong social aspect with a lot of things to do such as hiking, trekking, skiing, boating and general exploring whilst getting to meet a lot of locals along the way. However this was different. Myself and James had drawn up a list of places that we were going to see and sweet Jesus we were going to complete it.

       Top left: Outside of Ryokan
       Bottom left: The hallway
       Top right: One of the rooms
       Bottom right: My bed










Since writing about temple after temple after temple, with a few rock gardens thrown in there is not the most nail biting, eye brow singing read you’ll ever experience; I’ll be mercifully brief with words and use pictures to get the message across.

1 Ryoan-ji; Rock Gardens! Fuck Yea!

2 Kinkaku-ji; Golden Buildings, because why the fuck not!?

3 Ginkaku-ji; Silver Buildings!…That don’t actually contain any silver…

4 Arashiyama; Fucking Monkeys!

5 Kiyomizudera;…..Meh!

6 Fushimi Inari; Shinto Arches…Shinto Arches everywhere…

 So as you can see from the pictures a thoroughly touristy time was had by all. Although Kyoto is stunningly beautiful and a damn sight nicer than Tokyo (in my humblest of opinions) the main downside is that in Spring it is utterly heaving with tourists. You can’t swing a cat without hitting other westerners and I know being a western foreigner complaining about other western foreigners sounds somewhat hypocritical of me but I actually live and work in the country, so I like to consider myself a cut or two above the standard tourist.

Not Me

So after we completed the drinking the socializing, and lets not forget the sightseeing, in Kyoto we made our way to Tokyo. Once more due to the sheer lack of cash we decided to get creative with our plans. Rather than catching a plane or a Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo we decided to get something called the Seshun Juhachi Kippu which roughly translates as “The Youthful Eighteen Pass”. Essentially this is a train ticket that costs about 8000 yen with five tags on it. Whenever you activate a tag you get unlimited rail travel for the day but only on local trains. So that immediately excludes Shinkansens and inter city trains. Also you can share this ticket by using one tag per person. So after some careful planning, myself and James bought a ticket between us and proceeded to spend nine hours catching six trains between Kyoto and Tokyo. Despite some apprehension beforehand it was actually really cool. Because we got on and off most trains at their terminals we were almost always able to get seats and the regular changes between trains gave us time to stretch our legs, get some fresh air and a bit of food. So if your ever looking to get around Japan on the cheap (and I mean the dirt cheap) use the Seshun Juhachi Kippu. It may not be fast but it’s cost effective and actually quite enjoyable.

So now that I’m doing licking the balls of the JR rail company I can tell you what I got up to in Tokyo…well the truth is not a lot. We did some more sightseeing (I’ll put some pictures down below) but I spent most of the week lounging around with my girlfriend in her apartment (I wont put those pictures down below as this is a high brow website). So yea, in conclusion a great Spring holiday.