Kyoto
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We spent Golden Week in Kyoto (Japan)
After the road trip, my parents are going back to Vietnam while we still enjoy Japan (in Kansai) for about ten more days. We take a shinkansen for the first time from Tokyo, heading to Kyoto. Kyoto is a fairly expensive city, so JB chooses a hotel for us in the outskirts of Kyoto. We’re right in the middle of Golden Week, a week with lots of public holidays, when the whole of Japan goes on vacation. Our hotel in Kameoka has an onsen on site, which JB loves because he only has to go down three floors to enjoy the hot and cold baths and the sauna. There’s even…
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Buying a fan in Kyoto (Japan)
To easily find your way around Japan and rediscover your favorite shops, opt for a Holafly eSIM ! You’ll get unlimited data during your stay, plus the Always On benefit: 1 GB/month of backup data included to stay connected no matter what. My latest obsession is the Japanese fan. Luckily for my wallet, they’re not very expensive. I bought my fan at a specialty shop in Tokyo and I was really happy with it. But I told myself I couldn’t settle for just one fan. Last time, I lost my only Japanese fan during a heatwave in Istanbul and suffered every time it got hot; I need at least a…
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Taking the shinkansen between Tokyo and Kyoto
This is our second trip to Japan, but last time we preferred to fly between Osaka and Tokyo because it was cheaper. This time, we need to go to Kyoto from Tokyo, so we opted for the shinkansen. The shinkansen website is incomprehensible; JB can’t even create an account because his credit card won’t go through. However, in big cities, there are automatic machines to buy your shinkansen tickets. We were in a small town when we decided to buy a ticket, so we simply bought it at the counter. They asked us “reserved seats or not?” and we said “reserved seats” since we’re leaving the day before Golden Week…
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Digital Nomad: Results after 1.5 months in Japan (Osaka, Kansai, Tokyo)
That’s it, we just spent 1 month and a half in Japan, 1 month in Osaka and 2 weeks in Tokyo. It’s time to take stock of this incredible experience. This is the very first time we come to Japan. The reason why we have never been there before is that we want our stay to be really special. So, when we were on a permanent contract, 2 weeks seemed too short; and when we were on an 11-month world tour, the budget for a stopover in Japan seemed too big. So coming here as digital nomads is really the best option for us. Japan allows us to make many…
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Travel Diary Kyoto (Japan) #5: Kiyomizu-dera, Hokanji, Ishibei-koji, Gion district
Today, we return to Kyoto with the intention of visiting the two famous temples that we didn’t have time to visit last time: Kiyomizu-dera and Higashiyama Jisho-ji But very tired from the intensive visits of the last few days and accompanied by a little cold, we only get up at 10am Part 1: Travel Diary Part 2: Practical Tips Part 1: Travel Diary Here we are, we are never very proud when we only leave the apartment at 11 am when the initial project is to take the train to Kyoto at 9:30 am Rhalala… for the trouble, we propose to three digital nomads met virtually on Facebook, to be…
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Travel Diary Kyoto (Japan) #4: Nishiki’s market, Cat Cafe
I was telling you briefly the last time we went to the Nishiki market in Kyoto. I will tell you more about it in this article Read my other travel diaries to Kyoto (#1, #2 and #3) I didn’t want to go at first, but my opinion changed after I met a Malaysian woman on a bus in Kyoto. She travels without a smartphone, without 3G/4G, just with a map of Kyoto given by her hostel, which, moreover, is in Japanese. As a result, she is completely lost. Her only landmark is the Nishiki market which isn’t far from her hostel, but she does not see it from the bus.…
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Miyako Odori: Advice and Practical Tips – Travel Report Kyoto (Japan) #3
As I explained to you last time, we went to Gion Corner in Kyoto to get information about their geiko show, before coming across a flyer of an even more beautiful show that only takes place in April every year: Miyako Odori As we are still in Osaka for a while, we were able to make the round trip during the day to Kyoto to attend What it is: Miyako Odori is an annual show/festival where geikos (geishas) and maiko (apprentice geishas) present their cherry tree dances. It is a very well known festival, organized since 1872 (there are years when it has been organized twice) Where: Attention this festival…
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Travel journal Kyoto (Japan) #2: Museum of Traditional Crafts, Kyoto Botanical Garden, Fushimi Inari-taisha
Read the first part of our stay in Kyoto here This morning, we wake up early to enjoy breakfast at Le Bac à Sable, a café opened by a French-Japanese couple. It feels good to have a good croissant and a good chocolate bar. Moreover here we don’t speak about “pain au chocolat” but about “chocolatine”, they are real ones. We highly recommend you! This morning, we had a meeting with an old Vietnamese friend and his wife. But we still have an hour ahead of us so I am motivated to walk to the Museum of Traditional Crafts, of which I saw some flyers yesterday at Gion Corner Museum…
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Travel journal Kyoto (Japan) #1: Sakura, Cherry blossoms
Seeing cherry blossoms has always been my dream. Every year, we remember that we have to go there one day. And finally, that day has finally arrived! As early as January, when we still didn’t know what we were going to do the next day, I put pressure on JB to book a hotel in Kyoto on March 29th and 30th, because the January forecast predicted the “full bloom” (the fact that all the flowers would be open) around those dates. And the forecast was absolutely correct. But unfortunately, as of January, the accommodations were already well booked, for both nights we will have to sleep in two different guesthouses…
