Okay, so here comes Day Four, hot on the heels of the day I arrived in Kyoto:

After sleeping like the proverbial (which was nice after my initial jetlag issues in Tokyo), I headed towards the main station for breakfast. I wandered around the building, marvelling at the panoramic views from its 13th-storey rooftop garden, then headed back to ground level for a traditional Japanese breakfast, or "brekfastu settu", as it's known in these parts.

Well, I won't be doing THAT again! The foods on offer ranged from the fine (rice) through the unexpected (super salty shredded salmon) and the bizarre (pickled seaweed, I'm guessing) to the frankly unpleasant (congealed partially digested soy beans), all washed down with some seriously astringent "match" tea. But I'm glad I tried it at least once.

There is a bakery just at the main bus station area, and I treated myself to a remarkably crunchy sugar-crusted doughnut and a steamed ginger bun that was almost McVitie's Jamaica Ginger Cake in its yumminess, then joined the long, long queue for the bus to my first temple of the day. Just behind me was a group of young, annoying, punchable Germans. I felt the need to join a different bus queue, just to avoid them. But as luck would have it, they of course were heading to the same temple as me. And yes, I kept seeing them (and, what was worse, hearing them with their arrogant bullshit conversations) the whole bloody day!

But let's put aside my petty issues against annoying tourists and concentrate on the sights...

Kiyomizu-Dera temple complex was first built in 798, but the current buildings date from 1633. There are loads of big temples, a huge veranda and a darkened hall containing a fabulous statue of Kannon, the 1000-armed goddess of mercy, flanked by amazing guardian statues, one of which in particular had really remarkable grace & poise, seeming ready to jump into the air.

Just up the hill is a small shrine, Jishu-jinga, dedicated to a pre-Buddhist local deity who is believed to help lovers. All I can say is, if that god came towards me down the street, I'd be running the other way! His companion is a two-metre-tall white rabbit that looked like a cross between Donnie Darko's imaginary friend and one of Moloko's Killa Bunnies!

I then proceeded to do the Lonely Planet recommended walk for southern Higayishima (the area of town east of the river), which takes in Teapot Lane (where traditional chestnut-paste-stuffed pancake makers were obligingly handing out free samples); the roads of Sannen-Zaka & Hinen- Zaka, with their pleasant olde-worlde wooden houses and geishas strolling along; Kodai-ji, a temple with marvellous gardens & a monster seated Buddha in a small temple next door that serves as a war memorial; Maruyama-koen, a large public park popular with picnickers.

By this time, I was getting a bit peckish, but - alas! - Lonely Planet had no decent recommendations for food nearby. This is where I had a bit of an epiphany, and decided to just follow my own nose for a change. Sure enough, within about two-and-a-half minutes I had found a small street packed full of restaurants. I picked one with prices that weren't too outlandish, and treated myself to a lunch of hot tofu chunks in vegetable broth. It was better than it sounds!

My full embracing of the traveller experience was heralded by a sudden change in the weather from grey & overcast to strikingly sunny - if a little chilly. This sunny weather stayed with me for the rest of the day. My first stop after lunch was the incredible Chion-in, which is just enormous in every way. I decided to rename it Chion-Bling for all the glitzy gold & sparkling silver on display. But it was also the most templey temple I visited, with full-on monotóne chanting of monks, beating of drums & clashing of cymbals.

The entrance to Chion-in, at the foot of the hill just beyond Maruyama park, is marked by the two-storey wooden behemoth of an arch that is San-mon, Japan's biggest temple gate. And just to the south of the massive main hall stands a belltower with Japan's biggest bell, a whopper at 74 tonnes cast in 1633. They say it takes 17 monks just to make the bell ring; I can believe this, having seen the size of the tree that they knock against its side to get it ringing.

Chion-in has everything: a fantastic view over Kyoto, a contemplative cemetery up against a cliff, side temples galore, and the whole thing is built on a majestic scale that cannot fail to impress.

At the foot of the hill is a completely contrasting little garden complex that is the opposite of Chion-in: it's small, understated, intimate, delicate. It reminded me of the Japanese garden I saw in Ipswich in Queensland, but only in the sense that this "real" Japanese garden put that one to shame. Although, at the same time, I could appreciate what the Ipswich garden was trying to achieve all the better for having now seen the "real deal", as it were.

My next temple stop was Shoren-in, a slightly more subtle complex of buildings that is most remarkable for the pair of enormous (and enormously old, by the look of them) camphor trees that stand either side of the entrance from the road. I've never crushed a camphor leaf between my fingers before, and the smell is intense! Inside, the temples changed character as the sun fell behind the hills, and I left at dusk in a truly autumnal atmosphere.

It was getting pretty cold, so I headed into a posh-looking café nearby for a restorative caffè latte - and a sit-down, more to the point! - before walking up to the incredibly massive bright red lacquer posts of the Heian-jingu shrine and catching a bus back into town. Back at the hotel, I treated myself to another herbal bath, then fell sound asleep on my futon.

A few hours later, feeling rather groggy but knowing I would regret it if I slept any more that evening, I walked into the now icy cold winter's night (thank heavens I had warm clothes with!) and made my way to a ramen noodle bar I'd spotted from the bus. It was fantastic! Suburban, unpretentious, but nonetheless with an amusing play on Christ's Last Supper as its logo (twelve dudes around a long table, drinking their soup from huge bowls). And the ramen & gyoza were just WOW. I had come to Japan longing for a bowl of ramen, and now I'd finally had one. Yay!!!

Of course, I was wide awake now, and didn't want to head straight back to the hotel. Instead I carried on up the street and went into a nearby place. I got into a conversation with Kevin, a student from California who was over for a few months on a Buddhism course. He was nice enough, and met my need for conversation, but he was really on a Buddhism trip and didn't have much else to talk about, so after a while I left.

I headed back to my hotel to read for a while, but first I allowed myself to go into a big late-night supermarket, just to see what products were on offer. I really do enjoy foreign supermarkets! They shed light on a different side of life. Of course, I couldn't even work out what half the things were - but that's as it should be. Satisfied with my peek at Japanese domesticity, and armed with a strawberry-creme chocolate bar that reminded me of the kosher chocolate I had at my old schoolfriend Stuart's house twenty years ago, I trudged through the icy wind back to my hotel.

Wakey wakey! It's Day Three here in Japan! There's lots to read about!

So today the weather got suddenly much sunnier, but also a lot cooler. A gorgeous autumn day in fact. Perfect weather for sitting in the bullet train heading west and admiring the courteous train staff service (they turn & bow before leaving each carriage!), which was how I spent that morning. And a big bonus was the splendid views of the conical volcanic delight that is Mount Fuji - which of course I HAD to photograph with my Fuji camera! - just as we pulled away from Yokohama and headed out on the long (but only three-hour by shinkansen super-fast train) trip to Kyoto, Japan's historic & spiritual capital and home no less than thirteen UNESCO World Heritage sites. The city was thankfully not bombed during the Second World War, so its thousand-year history has survived largely intact.

Kyoto's main railway station is brand-new and mind-bogglingly big & complicated, but I managed to find the tourist information desk after a while - and after a Chinese bun from a bakery that was eerily identical to the one I used to get my Chinese buns from in Melbourne. There I managed to get a room in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese guest house, just to the east of the town centre, perhaps a quarter of an hour's walk from the station. The hotel wasn't all that, to be honest, but it's full-on tourist season here right now, so I could just be glad to find anything at all.

Bags dumped (in my tiny room where there was just enough space to unfurl the single-sized futon and position the cherry-stone-filled pillow at its head), I headed out to a nearby Lonely Planet recommendation for lunch. All the way there I tried to learn the phrases for "I would like ..." and "how much is ...", but in the event I just walked in and was immediately served with the day's special, a tonkatsu breaded pork chop with rice & pickles, that wasn't as good as the one I had with Steve in Tokyo but was a fifth of the price and still better than some Schnitzels I've had in Munich.

The restaurant itself was small, with a few tables and a long bar that faced onto the kitchen area, where people were busy tossing vegetables in woks and scrubbing pots in a big sink. It seemed a family-run place, with granny and grandad arguing about something whilst the kids looked on. At one point a hoard of suited business types emerged from a back room, pulled on their boots and filed out behind me. I think there was also some kind of guest house upstairs, but it certainly wasn't aimed at foreign tourists as there wasn't a word anywhere in English.

Sated, I went out and started what was to become a magical forty-eight hours of touristy trekking & rubbernecking from temple to temple, with regular stops for food & drink. First stop was Higashi Honjan-Ji temple, the biggest wooden building on earth (what with the royal palace in Antananarivo, Madagascar, having recently burned down to the ground). This is one of a few big temples that are in the centre of town. Most of the others are further out on the fringes of the city, at the foot of the hills that form almost a complete ring around Kyoto.

I took a short local train ride to Tofukuji, southeast of the centre, and there visited the complex of temples that between them have amazing plant gardens, gravel gardens, rock gardens, tree gardens, and pretty much every conceivable combination of elements in gardens. I was very much NOT alone in my appreciation of the place; the crowds of tourists were overwhelming! It felt like Heathrow Terminal 5 all over again, only with much, MUCH nicer views. The crowds are here for the blaze of autumn colours that rolls down over Japan each year. Second only to the "sakura" or spring cherry-blossom season in popularity, autumn is truly a wonderful time to visit Japanese gardens.

So, after Sokusyu-in, Ryogin-an, and the Hojo "Hasso" Garden, I walked back to the railway, headed back to the centre, caught a metro train north, and thence walked all through the main shopping area of Kyoto to Gion, just over the river. This is a historic part of town with lots of warehouses & art galleries, as well as what Lonely Planet deems "the most beautiful street in Asia". It was very pretty, but I'm not sure that it was THAT good: a small river, a cobbled street, a row of pretty houses, a line of majestic trees.

Still feeling a little unsure of myself in my new/old traveller mode and in a country where I can't even read the signs, let alone understand them, I opted for another nearby Lonely Planet recommendation for dinner, but then wished I hadn't almost as soon as I'd walked in the place. It was a tempura restaurant and it offered all sorts of things in light tempura batter, including lotus nuts, but I was pretty much the only customer, the service was cool, and it all tasted way oily and basically shite. I really should have just followed my nose to somewhere less tourist-trappy. Ah, hindsight, eh?

Gallingly, in my search for the Lonely Planet recommended expat bar I passed restaurant after tasty-looking restaurant. Of course, the bar, once I found it, was empty and shite, but this time at least I had the sense to turn around and walk right out again. I instead treated myself to a "cortado" coffee in an unexpected Spanish-themed café downstairs in the same building.

I thought I would treat my now-aching bones to a traditional Japanese "onsen" bath-house experience (saunas, hot pools, cold pools, the Japanese answer to Turkey's hammam) and found my way to the Lonely Planet recommendation out west of the town centre - which journey included a long wait for a delayed commuter train on a freezing cold windy platform, with me not really dressed for the sudden coolness that came with nightfall - only to discover that the place was closed for today and tomorrow, or in other words for the two days I was going to be in town!!

I was really rather miffed at this, yet another Lonely Planet recommendation gone wrong, and determined to try trusting my own instincts a bit more from now on. Then I treated myself to a taxi to bring me back to my hotel, where I was able as a consolation prize to soak in the traditional herb bath on offer. It might not have been at all picturesque - it was in a small windowless bathroom with décor more like a boiler room - but at least I was rested & soothed and unlike the previous night in Tokyo I had no difficulty whatsoever sleeping through.

And that was Day Three, folks!