Kyoto, Japan: Geishas, temples and a Japanese NYE

After spending a few days in crazy, vibrant Tokyo, we decided to take an overnight bus to Kyoto; Japan's relaxed and beautiful former capital.

Kyoto is most famous for its traditional Japanese culture, incredible cuisine, geishas and beautiful temples. I was really excited to see it all for myself - and to maybe discover a different side of Japan to what we'd seen so far.

Visiting Kyoto's must-sees

Our first stop, the Kinkaku-ji temple (or the Golden Pavilion), definitely lived up to its reputation for being one of Kyoto's most beautiful sights. Kinkaku-ji was stunning but really busy, with loads of tourists like us gathering outside to have a look.

Another highlight was our visit to the Fushimi Inari shrine, which was a really different and fun temple experience. Fushimi Inari is made up of a thousand bright orange Torii gates, all engraved with Japanese lettering, which make up a tunnel that winds up a long mountain path.

Apparently the oldest gates in the tunnel are nearly two thousand years old, but new ones are constantly being donated by business owners who hope it will bring them good luck!

Our walk through Fushimi Inari was stunning. Despite how freezing cold it was, I loved the experience, and towards the top of Mount Inari, there were also some ladies selling green tea with gold flecks in it to help everyone warm up.

There are so many amazing temples to visit in Kyoto, but with a limited amount of time these two seemed like the perfect options because they both had something about them that made them stand out.

I didn't want to pack our days in Kyoto with too many temple visits either because the sudden change in weather has finally got to me and I've come down with a pretty bad cold here that's only just starting to go away!

After we'd seen the temples, we also took a walk to the Nishiki market in downtown Kyoto. The famous food market was filled with stalls selling all kinds of Japanese souvenirs, snacks and drinks, including some amazing melonpan (sweet bread) and loads of flavours of hot fruit tea. I've never really been a tea person before but I'm getting really into it in Japan because when it's this freezing outside the hot drink vending machines all over town are pretty needed!

Nishiki market

Celebrating New Years in Japan

This year we spent NYE in the traditional Japanese way; waiting outside an ancient temple to hear the bells ring. To be honest, it didn't beat fireworks and a house party but at least we were being cultural!

We started the evening by heading to Gion (Kyoto’s most famous geisha district) for some ramen (my favourite).

Ramen on NYE

Next, we headed to the bright red Yasaka temple to wait for 2019 to start. The crowds were heaving and we had to stand like sardines outside the temple for about an hour before anything happened.

Still, the amount of people there actually made for a pretty fun atmosphere and when the clock struck midnight everyone cheered before either heading to the centre of the temple to pray or going off to celebrate with some more sake!

On New Years’ Day, we decided to take a day trip to an ancient town called Nara, which is most famous for its Deer Park. The tame sika deer there were really gentle and friendly and it was a lot of fun feeding them with the deer biscuits from stalls around the park.

Feeding a sika deer

Now that we've said goodbye to 2018, it's time to say goodbye to the amazing Kyoto as well and move onto our next stop in Japan; Hiroshima.