Japan

We finished our first day in Kyoto with a visit to the Kodai-ji Zen temple.

Day 1 of our October half-term trip to Kyoto.

With the Imperial Palace Gardens and Shinjuku Gyoen both closed on Mondays it seemed our plans might be foiled until we spotted Hama-rikyu Gardens in our guide book.

After a few days in Matsumoto, the next stop on our summer tour of Japan was the Hakuba Valley.

Matsumoto Castle was one of the highlights of our visit to Japan in 2012 and so we were pleased to be able to return as part of our summer travels in Japan.

Keen to escape the heat of Tokyo in summer, we headed to the mountainous prefecture of Nagano at the end of August.