Visiting lots of temples and shrines

This morning we decided to go to the Imperial Palace. Rather than get the subway there, we thought we'd walk there past various shrines and temples.

We started our walk and bought a pack of biscuits for breakfast as there didn't seem to be any food shops around. Then we found a drinks machine offering bottles of drink for 100 yen (normally a similar sized bottle would be 150 yen), so we bought one of those each.

I can't remember all the shrines and temples we visited on the way to the Imperial Palace, but it was quite a few. Some of them weren't even listed on the sightseeing map we've got. But after you've seen a couple of shrines and temples, they're all very similar.

There were people with a TV camera at a couple of the places, and in one of them a bloke tried to get me to go with the TV people - I think he thought I was from the Osaka Kyoto Newspaper or sumat.

Although we left the guesthouse about 9am, by the time we reached the park where the Imperial Palace was, it was 4pm. One of the palaces looked like it was closed, and the Imperial Palace also looked closed, but looked like it hadn't been open. Moccle checked his Japan guide book, and it seems that it might be that you can only look round the Imperial Palace as part of a tour. On an information guide for the park, it also said the park apart from the Imperial Palace was open to the public.

We had a rest for a bit, then walked back to the hotel, which took probably about an hour.

When we got back to the hotel I typed up most of this blog post and copied over some of today's pictures to the laptop. Then we went out to the same place we went yesterday, where they have a menu in English, and the prices aren't extortionate, and had a nice meal. On the way back to the hotel, we went into a 7&i shop, and there was an ATM inside the front door there, so Moccle got some money out.

The ATM was a touchscreen one, in full colour, and you had to choose various options like what type of account you have before you could actually withdraw any money. When it came to withdrawing the money, the smallest amount you could withdraw was 10,000 Yen. Since we can always get some more money out in the future if we need some, Moccle just got 10,000 Yen, which came in the form of a single 10,000 Yen note. Moccle bought some toothpaste since he had brought a toothbrush with him, but not any toothpaste (all the previous hotels we've stayed at have provided both toothpaste and toothbrush), and we also bought another coffee cream bread thing, so that got us some change for the 10,000 yen note.

We got back to the hotel, and I went on the internet a bit while waiting for my final memory card to finish copying (I had started it copying before we went out to eat). When that was done I sorted all the pictures and then moved them across to the hard drives, then we went to bed.

Food
Breakfast: A couple of Coconut Sable biscuits; can of orange Fanta.
All day snack: Coconut Sable biscuits; Pine Cider (fizzy pineapple flavour drink).
Dinner: Beef; 3 cheeses; rice; spicy sauce. Pudding was ½ coffee cream pain delicieux thing. Green tea.