1. Kiyomizudera
One key to make this possible is to depart as early as possible! I left my guest house (Santiago) around 8 AM which was actually really close to Kiyomizudera. I could reach there by walking around 12 minutes (based on Google Maps). Another reason you better visit Kiyomizudera earlier is that it's one of the most tourist destination, so around 9 AM there will be a loooot of buses full of foreign tourists and you can see nothing but people, ugh. Kiyomizudera was on renovation when I went there, I actually knew it before but decided to just gave it a visit because it's one of my must-visit site in Kyoto. Well, I guess I have reason to go back there, huh? ;)
2. Arabica Coffee Higashiyama
After a short visit to Kiyomizudera Temple, I walked around to find this famous coffee shop, %Arabica Kyoto Higashiyama. Yup, it's located near Kiyomizudera, closer to Yasaka Pagoda and the colorful temple actually! Now you know why it's possible to visit more than 6 places in a day right? Hahaha. You can see that a lot of foreigners were having their morning coffee and breakfast here. Well, I think most tourists visit here before continuing their trip tho :) I'm not an expert coffee drinker but I thought the coffee was okay. Guess what, I had it as my breakfast and didn't get any gastric problem all day :")
3. Colorful Kukurizaru at Yasaka Koshindo
Apparently when you go straight from Arabica and walk to the Yasaka pagoda, you will find this temple with colorful little pouch called Kukurizaru. I have written about them in 10 Things to Do in Kyoto post ;) I just took some photos there and left because I had so little time. You can spare some time to buy the colorful pouch and write your wish, if you want.
4. Nishiki Market
I just love to explore local market!! I visited Nishiki Market by riding the bus. Turned out, it's much more than just a market. You can eat a lot of fresh seafood, see some 'strange' sea creatures you never see before, you can buy omiyage too here, anddd there are a lot of fashion/shoes stores! Brace yourself and bring much money, okay! Hahaha. I wish I had more time to spend :")
5. Kyoto International Manga Museum
If you're not a fan of manga, I think you can skip this place. It's basically a heaven for manga lover. There are mangaka exhibition, hall of manga history, merchandise store, and park outside to read manga. That's actually such a fun place, unfortunately I can't read Japanese :( They provide some english manga tho. Sorry, no photos because my phone's memory is broken and I lost all the photos T__T
6. Gion
It's already evening when I left Kyoto International Manga Museum and I decided to go to Gion to have dinner- without any idea what to eat. I was so excited and amazed by Kyoto at that moment and couldn't stop feeling so grateful along the bus ride. Gion was so packed with locals and tourists, there are lots of cute restaurants and dessert houses. I browsed the internet to find what food to eat there and found Musoshin Ramen thanks to tripadvisor. The ramen was delicious from what I can remember, but nothing special especially when you love your ramen spicy. Most of japanese ramen restaurants don't provide chili powder T.T And after the ramen I treated myself an oishii matcha parfait at Nana's green tea :) It was the one with less queue tbh.
Overall, it's pretty doable but if I had more time in Kyoto, I wouldn't do that. I would make more time to enjoy Nishiki Market (for food and shopping of course!) and enjoy reading manga at the park. Seriously. Omg while writing this I miss that solo traveling moment so bad! Should arrange another solo trip to Japan I think :p In the end, it's not important how many places you can visit in one day time, but how much you can enjoy those certain places (either it's just 2 or 3)! Hope you enjoy this post and can inspire you to visit Japan :3
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2. Arabica Coffee Higashiyama
3. Colorful Kukurizaru at Yasaka Koshindo
4. Nishiki Market
5. Kyoto International Manga Museum
6. Gion
How I looked in the end, ignore my bald eyebrows please HAHAHA |
๐ Find other Japan posts here: #BigDreamerInJapan Complete Blog Posts