Day 7: Kyoto – city of temples, shrines and tourists
The elusive Mt Fuji It was an early start for our day trip to Kyoto. We were on the train to Tokyo station by a little after 5:30am arriving in plenty of time to find our Shinkansen. It was our first really sunny day. There was barely a skerrick of cloud in the sky so we held out hope that we might see Mt Fuji on our way to Kyoto. We were not to be disappointed. The perfect cone was visible quite early on our journey once a few high rises disappeared. It is so like Mt Taranaki only larger! Statues beside a temple We travelled about 512 kilometres and while we were speeding along quickly, what became apparent was how crowded the place was compared to New Zealand. NZ has vast areas of open farmland without a village or town nearby but this is not the case in Japan - at least not the part we went through. While there is farmland it seems to be small holdings only. The trip took 2 hours 40 minut...