Today we went to Kyoto. An unprepossesing city at first, at odds with its fame, but give it a little time (a little shy) and it blossoms. Small rivulets everywhere; a trainee geisha having her hair done, a laneway of bustling shops culminating in a silent temple, men cracking oysters and cooking them in their own shells.

I love it. We live on the Keihan line, halfway between Osaka and Kyoto, and I like Kyoto much, much more. People are friendlier (we got flirted with for the first time, which means people actually noticed our presence).

We caught the wrong bus but it didn't matter, the driver waved us out to speed up his circuit, we arrived too late at a temple and climbed a nearby mountain instead, rushing against the dark and watched the sun go down and the lights of Kyoto flicker on beneath us, sitting in a giant Chinese character meaning 'great' carved into the hillside which they light once a year in conjunction with four other mountains. Kyoto flows like a glacier through the tight junction of two mountain ranges. No-one builds on the mountains, so the buildings sit like an uneven sea in the basin.