With only two days in Kyoto (plus our bonus day in Arashiyama), we needed to be efficient. It was unfortunately swelteringly hot when we were there. Both days were around 95F with a heat index of 107F.

On the first day, we took the Nishiki Market food tour at 11am and went back to the hotel afterwards as it looked like there was going to be a thunderstorm. We napped through the storm (and our food comas) and went back out to the historic Gion area.

We walked around some of the picturesque streets and saw the famous Yasaka Pagoda near sunset.

We had dinner at an izakaya nearby which was just OK. We weren’t that hungry after the market tour so it was more about just finding a convenient bite to eat. The local beer was good though.

The next morning I set my alarm for 5:50am. I was determined to visit the Fushimi Inari shrine and walk all the way to the top of the famous torii gates. Nobody else wanted to join me due to the early hour and their various ankle and knee issues.

I took the metro there, joined by a few other hardy tourists, and arrived before 6:30am. The shrine is free to access and you just need to bring your stamina and walking shoes.

I began the trek up the hill and there were very few others at this hour.

There were lots of little shrines to various animals on the way up as well. When I got to the midway point, there were some nice views of Kyoto in the morning light.

I continued up to the top and made the turn to come down a different way.

Eventually, I took a side quest to see a waterfall and it was, uh, disappointing.

As I got closer to the bottom, I passed a residential area, which was really interesting to see.

I finally made it back down around 8:30am and rewarded myself with the breakfast of champions from a nearby Lawson convenience store consisting of an egg salad sandwich, a Pocari Sweat and a vitamin gel pack.

I headed back to the hotel on a much more crowded metro and met up with my daughter for a second breakfast at the Hyatt Place.

Later that morning I navigated the subway and bus to visit the Kinkaku-ji Golden Temple, which is not really worth visiting if I’m honest. You can’t go in and you just get shepherded around a trail that goes around the building and back out.

If you have lots of extra time, it’s worth a visit, but if your time is very limited, you can skip it. While I was there, my wife searched the area near the hotel for some vintage shops, but didn’t really find anything that great compared to Osaka and Tokyo.

As it was so hot, we decided to have a konbini lunch. In other words, I ran to the nearby convenience store and we had a picnic in the hotel. You can’t see everything in this picture, but there was an egg salad sandwich, onigiri (rice ball with salmon), Coke Plus, Pocari Sweat, ice cream and frozen sorbet grapes, along with cooling wipes.

Even though we had 4pm checkout at the Hyatt Place, we rested a bit to stay out of the heat and headed to the train station around 1:30pm to catch an earlier train to Tokyo since nobody wanted to walk around in that heat and dodge the afternoon storms that were brewing.

I know there was way more to see in Kyoto, but most of it is outdoors and the weather did not lend itself to walking around outside in the oppressive heat. Hopefully, we’ll be back to see more of it at a better time of year.

Up Next: Kyoto to Tokyo on the Shinkansen Green Car

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