29 Sept 2023

 Didn't get out of the house till about 11 today.

Went to Fushimi Inari Taisha - the fox shinto temple with all the red gates. Tourist nightmare. It would be beautiful, all these red tori gates going through the forest, up the mountain, but it was so congested with people, it was gross. So we decided to get back on the train and go to Nara, seeing as that same train (a JR line, so free with our rail pass) went all the way there. Nara was a nice little city. The whole deer park thing was clearly a big tourist attraction too, but it was open enough that it didn't feel overly crowded and the deer were very cute. We bought some deer biscuits and fed them.

We saw a burger place on the way there, not far from home and near the train station so we stopped in there on the way back and had some awesome burgers, Murray's was cacao, Violet's yuzu and mine was wasabi. They were amazing, and great fries too. Murray also had a nice sangria and I had an odd iced ginger chai thing.

At Nara we bought a couple of fruit mochi cakes that were so beautiful. whole/pieces of fruit inside and they gave you a little string to cut them. The cross-section was gorgeous. Violet got a mandarin one and I got persimmon. They were nice but I think they looked better than they tasted. The fruit was amazing but the mochi coating didnt work imho. We also bought some of the most expensive but wonderful tasting grapes I've ever had.

Watched 'The Pale Blue Eye' on Netflix. It was ok.

12,892 steps

8.67 klms

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