Kyoto, Japan
From Sapporo, we went to Kyoto by Shinkansen train, and the travel scenery was great. It was the warmest in Kyoto during our three-week Japan vacation (around 36 degrees) with 100% humidity. We missed the nice weather in Hokkaido, where we enjoyed 25 degrees. We were all sweating a lot; I had a wet towel around my neck, mostly to clean the sweat from my bald head under a NY Yankees baseball cap.
The city is very big, part of one enormous metropolis with Osaka and other cities around, but it is full of temples and also has hills around. We went to Arashiyama to see the bamboo forest and, on another day, to the golden Kinkaku-ji temple, the botanic garden, and Fushimi Inari Taisha red gates. We really enjoyed it—amazingly beautiful places. We also ate great food, mostly Katsu/Tonkatsu, which is fried meat with rice as a side dish and different sauces. It was great. Japan is super affordable, really cheap—maybe because of the inflation they have now—but compared to Europe, even Slovenia, it is cheaper to eat, buy food, or go to a café or museum. There are a lot of vending machines where you can buy cold water or juice for around 70-80 cents. Dining in a good restaurant for three adults is around €50, and we almost never paid more than €100 for dinner (maybe only once in Okinawa at a great traditional Japanese restaurant where we got an electric barbecue and cooked meat and vegetables ourselves) and when we had some fresh, Godzilla-sized shrimps. A metro/bus ticket is around €1.30 per ride, taxis are expensive, and fruits are expensive (especially apples, which are the cheapest fruit in our country). On every corner, there are Lawson or 7-Eleven markets where you can buy fried stuff or any food/drink you like. We liked the most buying frozen fruit and then using their machine to create a cold smoothie.
