Saturday July 10th

Nijo Palace

It was raining heavily as I awoke this morning, with some flashes of lightning and thunder. Thankfully, it died down about an hour later, which meant we didn’t have to walk to the bus stop in it. Miss Kushida had graciously hired a car to take our stuff to the station in though before it stopped, just in case. We were leaving our beloved ryokan today! :( ).

The Nightingale floorboards at Nijo Palace that we visited first were enchanting – they emit bird-like squeaks as you walk over them, presumably to warn whoever is in the temple of your presence. We returned to Kyoto again afterwards (we had left our luggage at the left-luggage area) and had a brief shopping trip before grabbing MacDonald’s and taking a long Shinkansen trip to Tokyo to stay at our next destination, the Tokyo Yoyogi Youth Hostel. The second part of the trip through Tokyo station was awful. Dave’s bag ripped, and I got quite stressed out over my own luggage. We made it though, thankfully, but we were all disappointed when we arrived at the Youth Hostel. Single rooms and having a curfew of lights out by 11pm; but it didn’t stop us breaking the rules :P. We all went out to a small restaurant nearby for dinner (I had tonkatsu, rice, miso soup and the standard cold Japanese tea) and then returned to the common room at the Youth Hostel for a while. I left early to talk to Dave.