The time came for us to bid farewell to Tokyo and make our way to Kyoto the old capital of Japan and it's cultural and historical centre. Thank god for the efficiency of the JR rail system, as lugging our backpacks around is not a whole lot of fun. We jumped on the Shinkaren - the bullet train that runs the whole length of Japan - and were in Kyoto in a little over 2 hours. We had a little trouble finding the hostel (view from roof) as the map we had was in Japanese and not to scale. When we found it, we dumped our bags, pointed at more food and Emily caught an early night (still sick) while I went on a beer vending machine crawl with Ian - a friendly English backpacker (with no sense of direction and 3 compasses) I met at the hostel. Waking up the next morning with the obligatory post crawl hangover, I vowed never again to drink beer......... at least until we get to somewhere cheaper. It took a cup of Blendy & Brite and a few squares of Crunky , before we were ready to hit the streets for our first real touristy day. Unfortunately, the tourist gods were against us so we had our first rainy touristy day.

First stop - Nijo castle; a stronghold built in the Edo period (circa 1600) by the Tokagawa shogunate to protect the emperor. And a stronghold it is. The stone walls are about 6 metres thick and 10 metres high, with a 15m wide moat encircling the whole compound. As we entered we were stopped by a group of schoolgirls who asked to be photographed with us. We headed into the castle itself (partly to get out of the rain) and were impressed by the ornate interior (no photography) and especially by the specially contstructed nightingale floors which were designed to creak with the slightest footstep in order to protect the diamyo from the hordes of ninja that were apparently running around at the time. Outside back in the rain we met Stefan a German backpacker also having his first rainy touristy day and decided to join forces for the day. We wandered through the luscious gardens and were once again surprised (and amused) when a old japanese woman shared her umbrella with Stefan. We all left Nijo and wandered in the general direction of the Kyoto Museum. On the way we stopped at the Tea and Kettle Museum (name changed to protect the innocent) not worth writing home about but part of the japanese experience none the less. After that the Kyoto Museum, which was made a lot more interesting by the friendly guides "engrish" (it was her first day) When we went back outside it was pouring down so we decided to head indoors once more and meandered through the downtown shopping area, window shopping, when who should we run into but Ian, the only other person we know in Kyoto (Population approx 1.5 million). You gotta love travelling.