We woke up, got ready and packed up our room at Sakura Terrace The Atelier. We put our luggage in lockers at Kyoto Station and headed for Keage Incline. It was a beautiful spot for cherry blossoms and wasn’t that crowded, I’m guessing due to the light rain and early hour. This was also our first time using public transit at rush hour – holey moley did we get squished on those trains!

Next we walked to Philosopher’s Path which was basically empty! A lot of cherry blossom petals had already fallen but it was still really pretty.

Next we walked by Eikando Zenrin-ji and decided to go in. There was an awesome walk-through area where you could see inside the rooms of the temple. They still had the original gold leaf works on display behind glass. There was also an amazing pagoda, a cute pond with little bridges and gigantic koi fish!

Right near here was another temple called Nanzen-ji. This was supposedly the best zen garden (or most important? not sure about the translation). I wonder if it’s because Eikando Zenrin-ji Temple was the headquarters of the Jodo Sect Seizan Zenrinji Branch. Not sure if the two are connected or not. They were both awesome to visit and not originally on our radar. Nanzen-ji had these gigantic aqueducts on the property.

We grabbed lunch at Kyoto Station (beef udon) before boarding our last shinkansen. We had a much better view of Mt. Fuji this trip!

On our way from Tokyo Station to our hotel, one of the stops was Ueno Station. We found a little stand to buy Ryan strawberry-covered pressed butter sand cookies. We arrived at our hotel, Andon Ryokan. During check-in they served us water and a Japanese sweet. In this hotel we just have futons on the floor. Each floor of the hotel has two bathrooms and a shower room and fridge/tea/microwave area. We’re also able to reserve time in the jacuzzi and every day they have free classes in the lounge like flower arranging, calligraphy, etc. So far we really like it!

We headed out to Asakusa Shrine and Sensoji Temple. Technically the grounds were still open but all of the counters were closed so we couldn’t get a goshuin from either place.

We walked further into Asakusa to Gansozushi, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Basically all different types of sushi come by on a conveyor belt and you just grab whichever plates you want. It was delicious but we had no idea what we were eating!