Well, my last full day in Kyoto turned out to be a scorcher, so I thought I’d better use it to maximum effect! With this in mind, I headed over to Nara late morning, which is a nearby town famous for its temples, big Buddha statues and very friendly local deer population.

Never ones to miss a merchandising opportunity, the Nara prefecture powers-that-be have duly set about kawaii’ing the ever-loving shit out of the local deer populace. Notably, this includes a) the presence of a somewhat effete faun type creature as official city mascot (a highly flamboyant Mr Tumnus comes to mind here…) and b) the more recent creation of some sort of part-deer, part-Pikachu marketing monstrosity. In fairness, said deer-cum-Pokémon abomination does at least have the grace to look thoroughly embarrassed at having been conceptualised into existence in the first place here…

Back in Kyoto later that afternoon, I also passed by Yokai Street, which translates as ‘Monster Street’ in Japanese. As the legend goes, thousands of years ago, yokai or ‘monsters’ invaded the northernmost street of the old capital of Kyoto – and for that reason the owners of shops on this street now construct paper-maché monsters as a celebration of the legends (and definitely not as a cynical tourist draw on the cheap, which is otherwise what you might be forgiven for thinking here…). Here are some of the ones I met on my travels at any rate:

And finally, I had the ramen to beat all ramen yesterday evening as well – definitely the best I’ve had in Japan so far, and that’s saying a lot! That said, when they asked if I wanted garlic, I was expecting maybe half a clove, rather than best part of half a bulb here – I don’t know if Japan has vampires, but if they do, they’d better steer clear for the foreseeable!*

And that’s it from me for today – I’ll be sure to check in again from Hiroshima in a bit!

* PS: They kinda do, though not in any kind of sense we would recognise in the West – and certainly no evidence of any allergies / aversions to garlic that I can find. Which, in essence, means that there is still a fair to middling theoretical chance that Japanese vampires may well still club together with the Yokai Street monsters and those scary graveyard bibbed dudes from the cemetery the other day to come and kill me horrifically in my sleep… If this proves my last entry, you know why…