Day 13- Nishiki market, Imperial palace & Shokokuji temple

Sorry I didn't post again yesterday! I had quite a late night but here it is:

Relatively lazy start, I left the hostel just before 10 to go to the train station. I knew I could use my pasmo train pass I got in Tokyo, but I couldn't figure out how to top it up. A Japanese girl tried to help me but she was from Tokyo, so she also couldn't figure out why the machine wouldn't take my pass.

Shortly after, I realised I had left the hostel with no cash because I was counting it the night before. So I swiftly walked back my hostel, got some money and tried again.

It turned out you have to top up your card on the other side of the barrier. To me that makes no sense because how are you supposed to get across if you have no credit.

Anyway, I eventually arrived at Nishiki food market. The market was amazing, there were so many stalls handing out testers.

The first thing I bought was octopus.

I was a little apprehensive at first because I didn't know what the inside of the head would be like, but it was delicious. It was like they had stuffed an egg yolk inside the head. I'm not sure how they would do that but that's what I'm telling myself it was. The octopus was so tasty. It was covered in a sweet, sticky sauce.

I then got this chicken thing which was wrapped in rice and covered in sesame seeds. It was pretty good but it came with this amazing sesame dressing.

I also had a dried prawn, it was so weird. Really chewy. But it was a little spicy, which was nice.

It was only 11am so I wasn't that hungry after that so I decided to leave. On my way I got a drink. It tasted like crystallised ginger, it was ice cold and really refreshing.

On my way out they were handing out samples of some kind of drink. The first one I had was some kind of rice based energy drink, it was so good. The next one was most definitely not an energy drink, it was sake, as was the next one and the next 2 after that. Needless to say I felt a little light headed after the best part of 4 shots of sake.

The women on the stand was so lovely though.

I then headed to Nijo castle, when I got there it was closed so I hopped back on the train and went to the Imperial palace.

It was so hot by this point, I quickly went to buy an umbrella to keep the sun off me. There were some temples on the palace grounds which were really beautiful, so I just chilled out there for a while.

I then walked to the palace. You could only go in with a tour, and the next one wasn't for a couple hours, and it wasn't going to be in English. So I gave that a miss and instead walked to a nearby temple.

It was so beautiful, really quiet and there was a lovely pond with lilly pads in it. I hung out there for a while and then walked to the museum nearby.

I'm pretty sure I was the only non-japanese tourist in the museum but hey ho. Nothing was in English, but all of the painting were so beautiful. They also had a model of the golden pavilion I was going to the following day.

When I left exhibition this women came up to me asking for a ticket, I had somehow managed to walk into the museum without paying. She was really nice about it though and it only cost about £1.50.

After the museum I was pretty tired not to mention hot, so I headed back to the hostel. I had a quick chat with my sister and then went to get dinner. I had golden curry, I didn't really feel like exploring too much.

When I got back to the hostel, there were a bunch of other people. I met a women called Anna and talked to her for a while. We were planning on doing similar things the following day so she suggested doing it together.

Anna hadn't eaten yet so we walked to a restaurant and I kept her company as she ate. We got back to the hostel and couple guys had joined along with some girls who work here.

We all hung out till about 1:30am (hence the late post) and then went to bed.