Kyoto
KYOTO - "Rome of the east", the old capital of Japan, home to 17 UNESCO world heritage sites and the city with around 2000 shinto and buddhist shrines and temples!!! All this sounds really impressive, so I couldnt come to Japan and not to visit it ;)
By the "good american will" Kyoto was spared from the WW2 bombings and thats why this city is so different from the rest of the country. It is still very clean and modern japanese living city, with more than a million people, but it has its charm and taste of history in the air. It is also extremely touristic! Of course, everybody wants to see it! It is so popular (with foreigners and japanese alike) that both days I was here I met fellow lithuanians looking around the temples ;)
The bad side is that the temples and shrines are located all over the city and transport is quite expensive, so I limited myself just to one part and walked around it. It was freezing cold here and surprisingly I couldnt find any one to stay with on CS, so one night sleeping under the tree next to the temple was enough to me and I came back to Osaka last night (staying in the same manga kissa for the third time).
From here tomorrow Im going to Himeji castle (one of the best in Japan) and starting to move southwards, back to Kyushu island.
Now about the taiwanese visa! The consulate in Osaka was much more friendly than the one in Tokyo, but still.... I heard the same answer, they cant issue me the visa if I cant show them the tickets in and out of Taiwan and that kind of complicates situation for me. I am still going to Kagoshima in the southern tip of Japan, but then I need to decide if to keep going to Okinawa and Taiwan (and loose about 120$ on return ticket) or just skip all these and go back to Korea instead! Actually going back to Korea doesnt sound too bad for me ;)))
Anyway, there is a portion of pictures from this wonder city of Kyoto ;)
