For our last day, we chose a Samurai Museum as our main destination, which was described on the internet. We are excited to see what awaits us. At the Samurai Museum, we are given a lot of information about ninjas and samurais in a humorous way. As I have already familiarized myself with the world of samurais in advance, the information provided to us was mostly not new, but still a nice refresher. We would not have been able to admire the original samurai armors and katanas otherwise. In addition to the short tour, we were allowed to throw shurikens at styrofoam walls and, in the end, put on a simplified samurai armor with a sword and helmet to pose for a photo.Samurai Museum Fun fact: The shurikens of the ninjas were not intended to directly incapacitate the opponent. They were rather used to create a sound in the distance and enable escape. After visiting the museum, we stroll through Kyoto's shopping street one last time and see what catches our eye. Mark finds a casual jacket in a Carhartt store, but since my backpack is already full, I can't make room for larger clothing items. So I limit myself to smaller souvenirs. For dinner, we have another dish with rice and omelette. We time it perfectly to leave the restaurant. On the street, a violin player starts playing the song 'Merry Go Round of Life' from the movie 'Howl's Moving Castle'. Since then, I can't get the melody out of my head, and it becomes one of my vacation anthems. The only remaining tourist attraction for us is the old town district of Kyoto. We set out to find it, but we can't find the exact street we saw on the internet. Nonetheless, the whole area is very pleasant to walk through and enjoy the old alleys.
As the rain gets stronger, we finally decide to give up our search and start heading back to our accommodation. We have covered about 20 km every day, so we have walked a total of 200 km on foot in the past 10 days. In retrospect, the number seems incredibly large, but when interesting and beautiful spots await us around every corner, we only realize how much we have really walked when we are in bed at night. It is said that we should prepare for the coming day, because we are going to Osaka, the kitchen of Japan, where hopefully many delicacies await us.
