The Great Dopamine Rush of 2025

Because I’ve been slacking on writing, this morning I spent a couple hours catching up on the last few days posts. We thankfully booked a hotel for Kyoto that had ensuite laundry so Hannah was able to get some laundry done while I wrote.

We have been taking it pretty easy here in Kyoto, so today we had a pretty big list of sights we wanted to see. I have always had a deep love of Japan’s Samurai culture, so getting a chance to go to the samurai museum here in Kyoto was not something I was keen to miss. To start our days adventure we walked the 2 km to the samurai museum, we had to wait 20 minutes for the next tour to start. So we walked around to find a snack nearby, it didn’t take long to find a booth selling huge skewers of tempura crab & omelets. Now I have a thing for deep fried eggs, they are so damn tasty. The museum was really cool, being able to hold ancient swords, and try on armor with real helmets. The tour was short and sweet and we got to throw shuriken (ninja stars) at the end of it. Hannah didn’t like this too much but I loved it.

After the museum we went for don at a nearby don restaurant. If you didn’t know, don is just sashimi on fresh rice. Hannah loves don back home so she was very excited. I ordered a bluefin don, Hannah a salmon don. Both were exquisite, simple and hard to beat in terms of fish quality. Bluefin tuna is so amazing, I wish it wasn’t $12-$24 per piece back home. My whole meal was $22 here.

From lunch we trained over to Fushimi Inari, To do the 10,000 Inari gate hike. On the way we passed by a Sanrio store, which Hans found a super cool Kuromi bag in. The hike was really cool, It was incredibly busy. We didn’t get to learn to much into the significance of the gates, it was so incredibly busy. Thankfully as we did the 5 km loop the crowd thinned, the path winds all over mount Inari and its gorgeous. It was a little more of a hike than either of us were dressed for, but we completed it in about 2 hours.

Our plan was to go check out the Kyoto Aquarium after Fushimi Inari, so we went back to the hotel to change into less sweaty clothes and headed there to catch the last hour of the Aquarium (when we originally checked closing time it wasn’t a weekend so we thought we had more time) . Sadly they close ticket sales 1 hour before doors close and we missed it by like 4 minutes. Hannah was kind of bummed, so we headed to a Family Mart to get a consolation sushi snack.

Now I love getting up high and seeing everything in a city from a vantage point, so we went up Kyoto Nidec Tower. On the same note Hans is terrified of heights, But she is a trooper so up we went to the top of the tower to have a look. It was cool to see all of Kyoto, which isn’t very big in comparison to Tokyo’s massive sprawl. Everything was great until the tower moved, I mean it moved kind of like a sign swaying in the wind. Well Hans did not like that one bit, She came with me knowing she hated heights. So I was happy to oblige going down after only a few minutes.

Safely back on solid ground, pangs of hunger in our stomachs we began our search for dinner. The area where the tower is, is on of the food hubs of Kyoto so it didn’t take long. I have never had teppanyaki before, so we went to a restaurant called Loin, to give it a try.

I LIKE TEPPNAYKI. I found out. I’ve always been apprehensive of trying it for some reason, the whole showy flair side of it back home was never truly that appealing. This was not that at all, our chef was in his late 60s and he was a consummate professional. Everything we ate was cooked to perfection and seasoned so well. We washed down our fanciest dinner of the trip so far with a half bottle of champagne, which funny enough paired very well with black wagyu fillet mignon. Our meal was way bigger than we bargained for and both of us left tipsy and stuffed.

After a short walk back we ended our night lounging in the hotel for a couple hours. All in all it was a great adventure day. We certainly got our steps in.

P.s I am not sure if ill be able to enjoy any other steak again after eating wagyu in Japan.

Till tomorrow.