From Tel Aviv to Osaka

As Sunday was relaxed, maybe we should have tried to catch up on touring the city. But we decided to take it easy one more day and it worked out perfect, with sun and good company.

And the sun finally came out

We met again the Israeli couple we'd got to know earlier in Kanazawa, Yochay and Michal, and went to explore the Arashiyama district in the western outskirts of Kyoto, famous for some of its temples (what a surprise) and the surrounding bamboo groves.

Did you know that the bamboo trees were so tall? We had no idea

The Path of Bamboo itself was rather disappointing since we expected it being much bigger judging from the praises of Lonely Planet. But the morning we spent walking around the neighborhood's small houses and peaking into the entrances of the temples without actually ever paying and entering one, was awesome thanks to our companions! They shared so many stories from their travels with us, from the farting Chinese horses to dysentery in Uzbekistan, that both scared us and made us laugh so hard... It was funny to see another couple with the paradigm of the nagging girlfriend (with all my love, Michal!) and ever-patient boyfriend, so many things in common! It is their third long travelling adventure and I don't believe that it's the last one. Guys, we feel lucky to have met you so early on our trip and hopefully we do meet again, be it in the Philippines, Cambodia or elsewhere. Have fun and stay away from the sun!

Bon voyage!

We wished we could stay longer hanging around Kyoto but we had a train to catch for Osaka where we were to spend the night. We will see more of Kyoto on our way back as it is definitely worth it. When we arrived to the Shin-Imamiya station in Osaka we could not believe our eyes. It was the very first time in Japan we actually saw dirty streets, homeless, drunks or both everywhere. Obviously we'll see much more of it once we get to Southeast Asia and we had been to dodgier neighborhoods before, but having seen nothing but perfect cleanliness everywhere these past days, it caught us unprepared. The hostel was decent but still when we went out for dinner we decided not to bring anything else than the money we'd need for the food. But then we crossed the street and suddenly all these huge pachinko parlors appeared, together with neon lights all around and countless restaurants with waiters standing outside and trying to drag us in... I so wished we had our camera with us! But since we're cowards, there are no photos from Osaka, sorry.

Tomorrow morning we'll be taking a train, cable car and a bus to get to Mount Koya to add a little bit of spirituality to our trip, hopefully it'll be worth the long ride.