The worst thing about going on holiday is all the other tourists: why are they all so annoying?! I’m sure lots of our fellow adventurers were mad with Dr HH and me when we went to the famous inari temple. I think we did things right by blazing our way up regardless of other people’s photo ops, but it seemed like there were a lot of people harrumphing in our direction. I’m a firm believer that taking a photo with no people in the background is not a human right: if it happens, it happens. I don’t expect anyone else to get out of the way of my stupid photos, and so I’m not wasting my time while other people take nine million snaps trying to get just the right expression.

We got to this temple, with its famous 4km walkway or orange gates, bright and early to try to avoid the crowds, and it worked pretty well. We quick marched to get past the crowds at the start, then had most of the walk more or less to ourselves after that, meaning we got to savour the sights and take all the silly photos we wanted.

Here I am dressed as one of the gates…not intentional, I assure you.

We also encountered some silly tourists back in Kyoto at Veg Out, a lovely light, spacious spot overlooking the river. There was a pretty small menu, but the options were fairly tempting. I ordered the panini, which was filled with roasted veg and allegedly tofu feta, though there was clearly none in mine – not a big deal, but they should have told me when I ordered. It was tasty and filling, a solid lunch.

Dr HH ordered this assorted plate, with some very exciting goujons in the centre, accompanied by fairly bland tofu, nice seaweed, and a few other vegetable sides. It also came with rice and soup. He declared it nice, but a bit unremarkable.

Dessert was a winner though! We ordered strawberry and choc chip muffins which had a great bake and flavour and weren’t too sweet – which seemed to be a hallmark of Japanese desserts, nothing seemed super sugary. It was a bit weird that it came chopped in half like this (everyone knows that the muffin top is all that!), but we could work with that.

The first thing I wrote in my notebook about this place was “Tourist friendly, nice service”, but clearly someone disagreed with me – some other western tourists arrived and wanted to order the panini as well…but they wanted to know exactly which vegetables were in it. They were trying to request some specific vegetables (lettuce, of all things!), while the poor staff tried to explain that they couldn’t really pick and choose. Eventually the tourists declared, “We really need to come back into the kitchen and see your whole vegetable selection” – when this was vetoed, they complained, “Well, coming here was a massive waste of time!”

In conclusion, tourists are the worst. Still, this wasn’t quite as bad as the time we went to Nottingham and some other people in our breakfast spot brought their own sausages and asked the chef to cook them!

Have you ever demanded to see what a cafe has in stock so that you can personalise the lunch option? Or accidentally dressed as the attraction you’re going to see?!