For those of you who are planning a trip to Kyoto, my advice is to plan out all routes and make note of train lines, bus numbers, etc. If I had done my last trip in a 'fly by the seat of my pants' fashion, I would have gotten lost. I'd also have wasted an enormous amount of time. If you know what temples or other sites you want to visit, look them up on Google. A lot of them have English sites now with "access" maps that show you what train lines and stations you need to go to.
It turned out that the line I had to take (Nara line) wasn't even in the same station as the shinkansen line. I had to go outside the station and walk for a few minutes. Luckily I'd researched that ahead of time. It was really close and not hard to find once I got the right exit from the station. Kyoto has a lot of signs up to direct you to trains and subways, so it's not a big problem. Here's a map to my first stop:
As you can see, it wasn't that long of a ride, and it only cost me 140 yen.
Once I got off at the station, I had to walk a fair distance. At first I got a little lost, because the station is a small one inside a town. I got turned around several times trying to get out of the town and onto the path that leads you to the temples. Thank goodness for GPS!
The rest of this post is very picture intensive, so I've added a break. Click on to continue.
