Welcome back to Day Five - THE BIG ONE! The last time we saw our hero, he was making his way through the throngs of tourists up the Philosophers' Path. Clearly, they named this before it became a popular tourist destination; philosophers can scarcely get a moment's peaceful thinking in here these days.

So, the northern end of the Path leads to the temple complex of Ginkaku-ji, which is most notable for its outsize conical pile of gravel just inside the main entrance. Really, this is a big big pile of gravel. And so perfect! Not a single stone out of place. We're talking not just physical shapes, but Platonic Ideals, fallen from the heavens and landed in a nice garden.

My camera had been working overtime for the last few days, and of course although I had a battery charger, for some reason the bloody international plug socket converter thingy I bought on the way here in Munich is a bit shite, and doesn't really like to let power through much. So I had to keep buying un-rechargeable AA batteries. But my camera chews through these at a rate of knots. Exasperated, I kept trying to take just the most spectacular pictures. But the problem was, it's ALL spectacular!!

I gave my camera a break after Ginkaku-ji, and instead of batteries I bought treats for me - yay! I had caramel-coated hot rice flour balls on a stick (they had a slightly charred taste from the barbecue, but they were okay) and then I had an incredible thing, so full of taste that the image in my mind was of the moment in Over The Hedge where the packet of tortilla chips gets ripped open, giving rise to a thermonuclear mushroom cloud of flavour over North America. Now I truly know the meaning of "rice cracker"! Not the poxy things you buy in Europe that look - and taste - like flattened toilet rolls, no no! These are just on another plane entirely. Wow.

As the sun set, I made my way back to the main railway station. It was getting very cold again, but I was lucky enough to go to the toilet in the station, where they not only had underfloor heating but also undercheek heating. You've just gotta love Japanese toilets! I love toasted buns in the morning...

The shinkansen bullet train back to Tokyo was chockerblock, but I managed to find a seat in one of the carriages for people without a reservation and I promptly fell asleep until Tokyo. There, I negotiated my way through the Metro system (I still had Steve's second Metro electronic pass card thing in my wallet; it's like London's Oyster card or similar things in Hong Kong & Singapore) and got back to Steve's place in Akasaka. He had only just got back in from work when I arrived, and we headed straight out to a nearby Korean restaurant for dinner.

The Korean place was much better than it looked from the outside, with delicious scrolls of wafer-thin wagyu beef that the waitress fried for us in the big wok-shaped grill pan in the middle of our table. There were also these crazy mushrooms that look like mini haystacks with delicate little heads on the end of bunches of tiny pale stalks. Delicious! We skipped dessert, instead heading back to Steve's for a few more of the beers we bought the other night.

Steve introduced me to Shaun the Sheep on DVD. He told me how he had become hooked on Shaun the Sheep when he was visiting his two-year-old niece in the summer. I have to say, it's one of the best kids' programmes I've seen in a long time. So amusing, on so many levels! It brought me back to normal after what had been a fantastic few days of otherworldliness in the temples & shrines of Kyoto.

On the fifth day of my Japan visit, I made the most of the time I had left in Kyoto, before jumping back on the bullet train to Tokyo and catching up with Steve again.

It was another beautiful autumn morning, with a chill in the air that was offset by the sun's rays warming that part of my skin that was exposed to the elements, ie my face. I walked towards the station again looking for a new breakfast option.

It struck me, as I was crossing a road, that it should come as no surprise that mobile phones are pre-loaded with naff ring tones: the pedestrian crossing, rather than simply bleeping at me, was whistling a merry little tune of electric crapness. Then , at a busy junction I found what I needed: a busy-ish plastic-ish chain restaurant with muzak and chairs that were fixed to the floor, but more importantly with "breakfastu settu" menu options that were intelligible to me - and cheap!

I opted for the filet of salmon set, which thankfully tasted much less weird than the previous day's effort. I was flummoxed by the mini nori seaweed sheets that came on the tray in a little plastic sachet like some sort of refreshing towelette, until I saw someone at the next table use them to pick up lumps of rice, and I have to say, after following suit, that it was a good taste combo.

I felt pleased to have partaken in what I am guessing - and hope - is bog-standard Japanese everydayness. And then, energised for the day's sightseeing, I found the bus I needed to take me to my first port of call in Namzenji, northeast of the centre of town and a short walk from the bus stop through a quiet residential area.

This is another delightful collection of temple structures, once again with a two-storey wooden entrance gateway, but this one you could go up. Following the now-standard temple visiting routine, I dutifully took off my shoes, put them in the plastic bag proferred to me, and climbed the low-ceilinged staircase to the viewing platform. The view over nearby hills and back into the city was lovely on this cloudless morning.

I walked up into the hills behind the temple but quickly realised I was going the wrong way. It was pleasant walk though, so I headed on through the majestic trees and up the deserted ridge until I was in danger of not being able to find the way back. Then I walked along the aqueduct that passes behind the main temple complex, at one point waiting for a whole hoard of giggling primary school kids to pass over a narrow crossing. So much for being in the middle of nowhere!

After visiting the main temple building, with its beautiful gravel gardens and antique wall screens, I headed back into the hills (on the right path this time!) and to the Oku-no-in forest shrine, where I found an elderly lady busy praying to the small Buddha icons placed inside the dark cave at the top of the ladder. From there I continued along the mountain stream and up over this ridge of hills, past a large cemetery and down to the Nyakouoji shrine.

To my great delight, a woman was selling bento boxes in front of the shrine entrance, so I bought one and got stuck in to my first true-blue Japanese lunch box experience - accompanied by a bottle of water from a nearby trusty drinks vending machine. It had the works: rice, pickles, soy beans, shiitake mushrooms, some smoked eel, and some slices of the special rougher tofu that they use here for desserts. Yum!!

Duly re-energised, I headed for the splendid temple complex of Eiken-do, with its marvellous revolving Buddha statue and hilltop pagoda with more breathtaking views over the city. From there I walked the Philosophers' Path northwards alongside a quiet canal, stopping at one point for gelatinous slices of what I assume was green tea coated in coarse flour. Looking back, I remember the texture to be like soft Turkish delight, but at the time I have to admit it felt like I was sticking my tongue in whale blubber. What's more disturbing is, that wasn't disturbing! The taste was most refreshing.

My next stop was Horen-in, which made a nice change from the other temples simply through being off the beaten track; its bucolic charms were unspoiled by the hoardes of tourists to be found at many of the other temple complexes in town. The most remarkable feature was the huge mounds of fine gravel that from afar looked as though they'd been formed in a sandcastle-like manner by turning 20-metre-long moulds upside-down.

Back on the Philosophers' Path, things were hotting up in the tourist hoardes stakes. I could tell we were approaching a big big sight, because the number of small tourist tat vendors was increasing. I stopped to sample the wares of a small manufacturer of pressed ginger snap biscuits that reminded me of those little pictures on starch that you used to get in cereal packets that you could colour in and then put in the oven and they would shrink down to be the size of a keyring. I think I had one once from that dodgy sci-fi film The Black Hole.

Wow! Day Five is turning out to be a whopper! I think I'll stop there, and leave you wanting more; either that or gasping in relief that the end is come...