Our family visited us in Kyoto and again we discovered a lot of new and exciting places in our beautiful city!

We ate Kyoto sushi with Jurgen and Carlijn. Because Kyoto is located far from the sea, the traditional sushi is not made with fresh fish but prepared fish and herbs.  This sushi has so much taste it doesn’t need soy sauce or wasabi!

We visited a beautiful teahouse near our house, where we had our own private room with a fantastic view of the garden. The traditional Green Tea is very bitter, but tasty!

With Ben and Rina, we biked to Arashiyama, a nature-area in the west of Kyoto. The view on the way was amazing, some of the mountains were covered in snow.

In Arashiyama we climbed the mountain to the Monkey Park. Lots and lots of hungry monkeys!

Afterwards we walked through the green bamboo forest.

On the last day Ben and Rina were in Kyoto, we went to Nara, a small town near Kyoto which used to be the capital of Japan. Nara is famous for it’s temples (the biggest wooden structure in the world is located here) and the many many deers walking around.

This creepy guy is Pindola, a monk who specialized in occult arts and now has a statue in Nara. You have to touch the statue and then your own body to heal that part of the body :-)

Inside the biggest wooden temple of the world was the biggest bronze Buddha statue of the world!

At the end of the day we had a nice cup of green tea and warabi mochi, which is jelly-like food made from the roots of plants, covered in toasted soybean flour!