Wednesday April 9th
We decided to not waste the last morning in Hiroshima, since we loved this city so much, and walked up to the castle. We walked the grounds and inside the rebuilt castle (it was destroyed during the bomb of course) fairly quickly since we had to be back in time for check out. Then took a bullet train to Kyoto! Found our Airbnb tucked away down a small alleyway, dropped our stuff and went out again. There is a ramen restaurant there that I really wanted to go to but it’s small and people say they waited hours in line for, so I decided we should eat dinner at 3:30. It worked perfectly, no line, we sat right at the counter and got to watch the kitchen in action, then ate our delicious ramen (mine with GF noodles). After our early dinner we went to a tea ceremony where we were dressed in Kimonos and they did my hair up in some elaborate updo. We took pictures in their Japanese gardens and then sat on tatami mats learning about the tea traditions and how to make matcha tea. We were also given some little sweets to eat with it which were good. None of us love Matcha tea, but it was such a little amount that we were given, that it wasn’t difficult to drink it all and not be rude. We all thoroughly enjoyed the experience, even though it was a touristy thing to do, we still learned a lot and it was fun dressing in traditional clothes. There’s a huge covered market that we wandered around afterwards. I think all the cities in Japan have these covered market areas, we went to the one in Nagoya, walked by the one in Hiroshima and now in Kyoto. Paul and I found a small bar probably no bigger than our bathroom at home and at one point we had 12 people in that bar! The boys enjoyed shopping on their own. Kyle even bought an entire outfit for less than $95! The prices here are cheaper for most food, drinks and merchandise. The lodging and bullet trains are more expensive.