Kyoto was the capital of Japan for over 1000 years before Tokyo took over in 1868. We decided that this would be the best place to start our tour of Japan as we wanted to absorb some of the traditional Japanese culture before we overdosed our senses in Tokyo. That isn't to say that Kyoto has escaped the advance of technology but it still has quite a lot of nice old fashioned looking streets and you can regularly spot people shuffling around the streets wearing kimonos and even occasionally glimpse a geisha.

Kyoto is just small enough to walk around on foot but we sometimes used its underground system and buses to save our legs. We spent our first day just wandering around the streets of Kyoto acclimatising ourselves to Japan but after this we hit the main sites. Kyoto is the home of the old Imperial Palace, Nijo Castle and quite a few large temples and shrines (as well as literally thousands of smaller ones).

There were two extremely large Buddhist temples near our hotel, the Nishi Hongan-ji temple and the Higashi Hongan-ji temple. Both of these are important temples in Kyoto, and they were very popular with school and tour groups, but apart from their size they weren't particularly impressive. The many smaller temples around Kyoto were generally much more picturesque.

Kyoto Imperial Palace
The Japanese Imperial family lived in Kyoto for over 1000 years until the capital moved to Tokyo. However, the palace they moved out of in Kyoto is still used for state ceremonies including the inauguration of new emperors.

Foreign visitors can take a free tour of the palace with an English speaking guide but you have to apply in advance with your passport for a permit. However, we somehow managed to get our permit about a minute before the afternoon tour started!

After all this bureaucracy, the palace turned out to be a little disappointing as the buildings were a little plain. The gardens were quite nice, though, and some of the courtyards were covered with the famous Japanese raked gravel.

The Gion District is the entertainment centre of Kyoto. Apart from its many restaurants and clubs, this is where many of the geisha houses are. These are prohibitively expensive but you can get a free glimpse of the geishas on their way to work if you wander along Hanami-koji Street between late afternoon and early evening. We managed to see a couple but our pictures aren't very good.

We hadn't really planned a visit to Osaka in our itinerary but we changed our mind on a rainy day as there wasn't anything we wanted to do indoors in Kyoto. We decided to shelter from the rain by going shopping in Osaka. It's quick, cheap and easy to get to Osaka from Kyoto on the train. However, when we got there our plans changed again as the rain had stopped, the sun was out and it turned out to be a real scorcher of a day. So, instead of shopping, we decided to have a look around Osaka instead.

There isn't that much to see in Osaka as it is primarily a commercial city - in fact, if Osaka was a country it would be in the top 10 based on its GDP! We visited the misleadingly named Floating Garden Observatory perched on the top of the 170m high twin-towers of the Umeda Sky Building. We had an excellent view of the city but we couldn't work out why it was called a “floating garden” as we didn't find a single plant up there!

Osaka-jo Castle is probably the main attraction in Osaka. When we were walking through the park surrounding this castle, we saw quite a few makeshift tents erected between the trees. We had heard that many of the businessmen that were bankrupted during the stock market crash were now living in parks like this.

Nara was the capital of Japan before Kyoto. It is also easy to get to on the train and it is definitely the best day-trip that you can make from Kyoto. The main attractions in Nara are the temples and shrines located in Nara-koen park which is an easy walk from the station.

This park is famous for its tame deer that wander around looking for free handouts from tourists. There were stalls selling special biscuits to feed the deer with and, not surprisingly, there were always quite a few deer hanging around these stalls on the off-chance that somebody would make a purchase. The deer would immediately descend upon anybody who bought these biscuits and most people we watched would immediately panic, dropping their biscuits on the floor and running away screaming from the deer. However, the deer were mostly well behaved and we even saw some tour guides making them do tricks for these biscuits.

There is a very pleasant walk around the impressive temples and shrines in the park. Afterwards we had a wander around some of the narrow residential streets of Nara which where littered with smaller temples and shrines.