Things got a bit overwhelming in the last few days. Spending time in cities is awesome but also comes with the drawback of not having any free time in the evenings because there is so much going on. We had two more lovely days in Kyoto then went to Osaka and Tokushima. Now we are back in the countryside, this time we are in Shikoku, Japan's smallest and least touristy main island!

Check out an interactive Map of the places we visited here. I will update this map as we continue our Journey. This post is about Day 13 to 16.

I split this entry in the cities we visited.

Kyoto

Kyoto was super lovely to us! With the bikes we rented, we cycled around Kyoto like there was no tomorrow. In total, we cycled about 45 km in two days… This were our bikes! Just look at those tiny tires. Aren't they lovely? I always wanted to ride such a bike and after spending a couple hours on one I must admit that they are pretty comfortable to ride on and also pretty speedy. They were plenty fast enough for cruising around Kyoto and super easy to park anywhere (It is very hard to find good/free bicycle parking in Kyoto for some reason).

By the way, in the picture above, the bikes are "locked". See for yourself if you can find this totally insecure "locking" mechanism that we were instructed to use.

The following pictures are just some random impressions that I got while cycling around. Somehow, you constantly cross train tracks in Kyoto when cycling. A lot of train tracks are built right on the roadside level (compared to Tokyo and Osaka where Trains are either underground or above ground). With the train schedule of a bustling city like Kyoto, you will be sure to wait at one of those Train crossings more often than not. Pretty architecture we found close to the museum quarter of Kyoto. This picture and the following one were taken at Nanzen-Ji. One of my favorite gardens in the whole of Japan. Super quiet, quite small and very pretty. It has a waterfall, a pond with Kois, some bridges and a whole lot more. This is Japan too: Sights like these are very common: Trash being collected at the side of the road. Each type of trash has its own day where it is collected. This was one of the biggest disappointments of our trip to Kyoto. After an exhaustingly hot day, we cycled to this spot: The Kyoto international conference center. I got the idea to go there from a guide-book which listed this building in the top 5 architectural sights in Kyoto. When arriving there, we found out that you cannot enter the building without a permit so the only pictures I could take were from the front of the building which was impressive but didn't blow me away. After about 10 Minutes of shooting pictures, a guard came out and signaled us to leave the premises. On our last (half) day in Kyoto, we went to two touristy hot-spots. Monkey Park (see above) and Bamboo forest… This picture of a monkey in front of security camera screens was just funny to me somehow. Imagine lots of Bamboos standing next to each other. Now imagine lots of people walking next to this bamboo. Got that? Okay, you know what Bamboo forest is like.

Osaka

We left Kyoto at around 4 PM and arrived in Osaka at around 5 PM (there are local trains that run from one city to the other constantly). When we arrived in Osaka, it was already kind of late and we had to pick up a car on the next morning at 12 PM so there was not much time to explore this huge city!

We had Kushikatsu (Fried Stuff on Skewers), tried the famous cake of Rikuro that is so popular around the internet (We were not impressed. This cake is no match for almost any cake in German Cafés). This shot was taken close to our Hotel. Just look at those layers and layers of road. Feels so different from any European City, it feels like you are in a metropolis (not in a good way though). As for touristy stuff: We went to Dotonbori, walked around there, had some Takoyaki (Octopus bits in small batter balls covered in all kinds of sauces) and went to a bar to have some drinks.

Tokushima

We had to wake up early the next day to pick up our rental car from the airport (see, there are my excuses why there were no blog posts in the last days). We got the car and went straight to Tokushima where we had our first stop of our five day road trip.

After the lasst super busy days, we were just taking it easy. It was nice to be on the road, relaxing our bodies in the seat of a car for once. The Japanese countryside is so pretty and driving in Japan is just a breeze. Sure, the speed limit is super low (70 to 100 km per hour on the expressway) but drivers are just super chill here. Nobody is stressing you out, people are looking out for each other. If people honk, they do it just very shortly, just to remind you of something not to show aggresion towards you.

Anyway, I took two pictures of Tokushima worth sharing:

Iya-Valley (Middle of nowhere in Shikoku)

Which leads me to today! We left Tokushima and went west. Sadly, it started raining today and never really stopped. We went to a Café that I wanted to visit ever since seeing it in a YouTube-Video: Haretoke Café. This hidden gem is in the Iya-Valley in Shikoku. The owner repurposed an old school into this café/hotel/sauna. This is what it looks like from the outside. You can still clearly see that this was once used as a school building. Since there was not much else to do around the area, we drove to a nearby hot spring (Onsen) which had an outdoor bath with natural spring water that smelled like sulfur. It was lovely! We could sit in the valley, surrounded by tall mountains that are covered in forests (see the picture above) and just relax while the rain kept on falling.

The following pictures show some impressions of just how beautiful Shikoku and the Iya-Valley are. I don't get, why those regions are not popular with foreign tourists. It is just super lovely here and so far, this is one of my favorite regions in all of Japan. But part of the appeal is also that there are not so many tourists here so there's that.

Just have a look for yourself…