I'm pretty sure in my thirty years of life I've made countless mistakes, but I believe there is a famous quote that states: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing thing over and over again and expecting different results".
This whole journey to me has been a learning experience, and I've discussed that many times in my blogs, and I feel like whenever I have made mistakes here I've done my best to learn from them and try not repeat the same errors again later on in the trip.
I feel like part of ensuring that mistakes don't happen too often can be related to how well prepared I am before each day, and also each different leg of my journey.
Although I don't usually make final preparations until the day before I make each stage of my trip, I know roughly beforehand how I need to get from city-to-city and onto the next country where necessary.
If you need further proof of this then you should have sat next to me when I spent hours trying to make the post-Vietnam portion of the trip work and what the best route would be to guide me through the final stages.
Although it's not something I do often, I had to pat myself on the back on Monday after a successful day out which involved me going to about seven our eight different places. Part of the issue with being abroad is that I can't just access the Internet anytime I get lost and look for a map of how to get to where I'm going.
The night before I carefully planned out how to get from place-to-place, writing down specific instructions to help myself, and picking out things along the way on each route so I'd know that I was going the right wayy.
I even took screenshots of Google Maps on my phone and was able to compare it to tourist maps whenever I came across them to give me some reassurance.
In hindsight, I think that's something I could have done all along, although I'd like to say that there haven't been too many occasions on this trip where I've been lost - thankfully.
Balancing my day out correctly can be tricky on occasion, and I think sometimes that I put too many expectations on myself to be able to see a lot of things in the space of time that I have. It's something I've been guilty of a couple of times on this journey, but as I have also written about, I like to make sure that I have too much to do, rather than too little. At least that way I can figure out what to proritise, and knowing what time things stay open until is a key part of deciding what order to do things in.
I guess in my desperation to cram as many things into my trip as possible, I can occasionally get side-tracked by thinking that I have super-human abilities which allow me to get from one place to the next, without feeling fatigue and somehow making sure that each day goes off entirely how I planned it. Sadly that isn't always the reality, and whenever this occurs, I think that it is important to adjust accordingly and try not to make the same mistakes in the future....
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What I described originally about things being quite spread out has turned out to be very much correct, and today as I've been walking around I've seen city buses travelling to pretty much all of the major sights which are around about everywhere.
Even if I'd have known how spread out Kyoto was before coming here, I think I'd have still chosen to locate myself pretty centrally as it has given me a good opportunity to choose where I would like to from an ideal access point. And also, in terms of arriving and departing, it never hurts to be located near the central train station meaning that it wasn't actually a very complicated process getting to my hotel at all.
Speaking of which, I have to say that it has been a very different, but enjoyable experience staying in a 'cabin'. Whilst I feel like I could definitely only have spent one night (by choice) in a capsule, I feel like having a much larger space is much less restrictive, and also it's not quite as 'freedom creating' as having your own room, where I've been staying has actually been pretty quite and I definitely think it's a viable option should it need to be in the future.
In terms of reservations after I spent some time yesterday, I only have one more hotel booking to make as where I am staying in Hong Kong has already been organised and paid for.
Back to my final day in Kyoto then where I decided to explore the nearby northern and southern reaches of the city, without having to venture out from my central hub too much.
There's so much to see and do here, I generally feel like I could have spent the same length of time as I did in Tokyo, picking a different compass point to spend time in each day.
A couple of days in Kyoto doesn't feel like it has been enough to see everything, but I guess that gives me an excuse to come back in the future.
As it happens, that's not the only city I could say that about on my travels!
With plenty of sights to choose from I wrote down a few of the main ones that I thought I'd like to travel to. It was hard to come up with a logical route as they were either north or south of where I was staying, but I figured that if I did both of the ones in the same direction first, then if I got tired or needed a break then I'd need to go back past the hotel on the way which might be a useful stopping point.
Most of the things that I was going to see whilst out and about today were cultural sights, and although it's not much to get into each one of them (£2-4) at the most, it soon adds up as I discovered in Arashiyama where I had to be very selective about the things I wanted to do.
I started off heading in the direction of Kyoto Station, and turned right the street before getting to it in order to head to my first destination which was Umujiri Park, something which I'd seen signposted on my first day here and thought about being a good place to visit at some point during my stay.
As is commonly the case, before I got there I found something else to distract myself with which was a couple of temples that I'd seen on the map that I was going to just not bother with. However crossing a large road it just so happened they were both on the same side as me as I came towards the park so I figured I'd have a quick look in, and in doing so I discovered they were free to look around:
I walked past the second temple I eventually went into which was Koshoji, but I only walked past it initially because I thought that it was part of one large temple, only to discover that there was an ally between my two upon walking past.
Koshoji had a much more impressive exterior, but was actually smaller than the first temple I went inside which was Nishihonganji.
I believe that there are many World Heritage sights in Kyoto, with most of them being temples, and I think that Nishihonganji is on the list amongst a few of the ones that I've seen along my way.
It had an extremely large courtyard with three main buildings - the two on the right hand side of the complex were connected together by a bridge.
I walked to the further building to the right and it was a traditional Japanese building from the outside, and going inside it looked how I'd imagine that old fashioned houses in this country were originally made with wooden floors and sliding screen doors.
I've discussed before how I like the look of Asian architecture, but the usual designs I associate with Japan are slightly different with what I've seen in Korea, China and Taiwan.
Inside the building itself there was a shrine which a few people were sitting in front of. The room was dimly lit despite the doors essentially being made of white material that you'd think would allow a lot of sunshine in.
Perhaps because of the wooden floor and roof it was also cool in there which made it a nice place to sit and relax to get out of the humidity which seems to have built up in the last three days.
I made the decision to put shorts on this morning as I knew that my day would likely involve a lot of walking.
Staying inside the shrine building for about five minutes or so, just to cool down more than anything I exited through a side door and walked along a bridge which was decorated with gold lanterns in order to get to the next room.
It was very similar, although the statues at the front were slightly different, and the room itself was a little smaller and not quite as wide. It was made of the same material, and I sat here too for a while, enjoying the peacefulness and total silence that the people praying were probably grateful of.
After slipping my shoes off I went back towards the main road, but made a brief stop at Koshoji just to look at some of the buildings as I'd seen from a picture at the entrance that the rooms themselves we pretty much the same as those next door.
It also had three large buildings, with two next to each other and the third one being slightly in front. It looked like this was also attached an office building or something as both to the side of me at the entrance, and on the opposite side towards the main road I saw people in suits walking in and out:
From here I took the short walk to Umujiri Park which I had a quick walk through on my way to the next location. Even though I'd thought it might be a nice place to go, I never expected it to be somewhere I'd stick around ages in, and I think that a brief walk was enough as there wasn't actually a great deal to see other than a large green area where there were lots of what looked to school trips visiting, and then also a large building on the far side which I later discovered as the aquarium:
I walked through the park entirely and then had to go down a little ramp to get under the flyover, and then continue on to Tofu-Kuji Temple which is another one of the World Heritage sights in the city.
Tofu-kuji itself was a very large complex indeed, and it was quite filled with tourists walking around and enjoying the beautiful surroundings.
The first thing I spotted was a little moat area with lillies growing in it, and it caught my eye was a bird in there which was looking for fish. I stayed and watched it stalk its prey before weighing up a better angle and totally disappearing out of my sight.
I carried on walking around the stone-laden grounds, walking the perimeter without actually wanting to pay to go in, and from afar I was still able to see the two main buildings and then also pretty much all of the five-story pagoda that it is famous for:
I now needed to head back on myself, but first after all the walking needed to find somewhere to get a drink from as it was very warm.
I'm not usually one drawn to vending machines and I pretty much always go into shops to buy things, but in Japan they line the streets and I went past one on my way the other day and grabbed a delicious lemon and orange flavoured water drink from there, and it just so happened that the first one I came across was a Y100 machine with the same beverage in it so with my drink in hand I was thoroughly prepared to continue along the road back past my hotel in order to get to the Imperial Palace.
I'm not sure I wrote too much about the palace in Tokyo when I visited there, I guess that's probably because there wasn't much to say considering you couldn't actually go inside.
In Kyoto it's slightly different as you can visit any one of the three imperial palaces which are in the city, with the only catch being that you have to put your name on a reservation list before hand and be taken through with an official guide.
I'm not sure if this is because it's still in use, or they are very particular about limiting the amount of tourists, but it didn't really matter to me as I wasn't too fussed about actually going and walking around the palace itself, but I did think that the grounds might be worth spending some time in:
Eventually after about thirty to forty minutes walking I caught sight of a very impressive wall around the outside which indicated that I was probably getting pretty close.
I headed through an open gate and into the grounds of the palace. Sadly the building or buildings themselves were hidden by some thickly growing trees, but I stopped for a while inside the grounds to take a rest, and also just soak in some good sights of what was around me:
Going back on myself I walked back towards one of the main roads I crossed earlier and took a right turn in order to head to Nijo Castle. Yet another World Heritage sight which has several gardens and the complexes of two different buildings, one of which is ruined.
From the outside it looked very similar to Tokyo Imperial Palace with the white sentry stand on the corner and some impressing looking walls up around the outside which followed the path of the moat.
Unfortunately by the time I'd got there, they'd stop selling tickets for the castle - or at least allowed the last people to enter, so I was just able to walk around the perimeter and see things from the outside which again wasn't a real problem for me:
It was at this point that I made the decision to end my sightseeing as in order to get to where I was going next I was going to have to do an awful lot of walking, and by the time I'd arrived everything would probably have been closed. I'd prioritised the things I wanted to do most, so I wasn't too disappointed, but I felt like at least if I ever come back to the city, I know exactly what to do first.
I'll admit that I was slightly hampered by having to walk everywhere, but unless I was planning to spend a separate bus fare on each thing that I saw today, that was the best way to get around.
There have been days on my travels when I have done an awful lot of walking, and today was definitely one of those days. I didn't get back to my room until about 6pm, and I'd been out and about since 11am with only a couple of short breaks in between where I gave my feet and legs a rest.
I have been guilty in the past of putting myself under too much pressure and suffering from it, but I think I've realised at this stage how much my body can take, and the signs it starts to give me when I get tired. I try to keep myself going by eating regularly and grabbing myself a drink whenever possible, but sometimes I do need to recognise when I need a rest, and perhaps if I had an extra day here then I wouldn't have tried to squeeze so much in, but these are lessons that I am learning along the way.
I've done a good job of balancing my time along the way, and I certainly wouldn't say that I missed out on things I really wanted to do today, it was just a case of underestimating how much walking at have to do, and also that I'd get side-tracked earlier on by visiting a couple of different sights.
Tonight is my last in Kyoto before moving on tomorrow morning, and I feel like my time here has passed by very quickly. It genuinely seems like I only just arrived, and now I'm thinking about where I'm heading to next. It's been a great stay, made in part by my unique choice of accommodation, and by a city which has plenty to offer, I would definitely not hesitate to come back again.
Too Much
Spice Girls (1997)
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