It’s our last full day in Japan – and the week seems to have flown. We had another 8 am start and we checked out of our hotel in Kyoto and headed to Nara. Nara is the sister city to Canberra, however it appears it’s not that big of a deal here. Nara is best known for its deer population and we walked through the deer park to visit the Todai-Ji temple. As with most temples and pagodas in Japan, it was built over a century ago and has burnt down a few times and rebuilt. Its probably a combination of wood as a building material and over use of lit incense sticks that plays a big part. The temple houses a 13 mt tall statue of Buddha. We walked around the park and wandered through different pagodas and temples. We even got to see a giant bell. Finally, just before leaving we got some biscuits to feed the deer.

Lunch was a traditional Japanese Bento Box with fresh and raw fish along with tempura vegetables and rice. We have taken quite a liking to the rice spice that is sprinkled liberally over the top.

We then drove from Nara to Osaka and visited the Osaka Castle. It is a giant 8 storey structure housed within a fortified castle and moat. We only had an hour at the castle and could easily have spent most of the day. The views from the top were impressive and it seems the central pagoda is almost as tall as most of the high rises in the city. As with most other buildings, this castle has also been burnt to the ground a couple of times, and was last rebuilt in 1931 and is the longest it has stood without being destroyed in its entire history.

Our final stop was at Dotonbori which is a shopping district. We wandered the streets and looked at a number of souvenir shops. There were an inordinate amount of eateries (as has been the case throughout Japan) – however these restaurants had giant sculptures out the front – like spiderman, dragons, crabs etc. We found a range of different flavours of Kit Kat as well as a variety of bags, knick knacks and clothing.

For dinner I had booked a Kobe steak restaurant called Ishida, which was about a kilometre away from the hotel. We caught a taxi there and realised that if taxis in Australia were as clean, friendly and efficient – Uber would probably never have been as popular. The meal in itself was amazing. The steak was perfectly cooked and melted in your mouth. It was the juiciest and most tender piece of meat I have ever had in my life. The chef cooked the meal in front of us, Teppanyaki style. The restaurant was quite small with seating for only 10 or so patrons. It was the perfect way to end the week.