Day 22, in which a badger greets us with its swollen testicles

Today we checked out of the Chisun Inn and travelled to Tokyo Station to cash in on our JR Passes. These glittering pieces of card give us unlimited train travel for the next fortnight, and we hope to put them to good use.

Our first trip was on the shinkansen bullet train down to Kyoto. The train pulled up at Tokyo Station (its terminus) to be met by an army of cleaners – the men in powder blue, the ladies in baby pink – which boarded each carriage simultaneously and swept through the entire train in minutes, gathering rubbish, wiping every table and pivoting the chairs around to face forward for the return journey. Inside, the train was spacious and comfortable, and when we later pulled up at Kyoto Station both of us were surprised to discover we'd been travelling for almost three hours.

We passed quite close to Mount Fuji during the journey, and we'd both been excited to see it covered in snow. Our excitement grew as we passed large fields covered in deep, deep snow, but it was only when we arrived in Kyoto and were greeted by little flurries of snowflakes that we realised the terrible implication: Kyoto is absolutely baltic. Later in the day I bought a scarf, and I still have ambitions to acquire a hat.

We checked into the Hearton Hotel – which was chosen largely on the basis of price, but turns out to be fairly centrally located, with rooms larger and more pleasant than the Chisun Inn and bedsheets that don't bring on an allergic reaction – and headed out to find lunch down by the riverside. We ended up at Merry Island, an Asian fusion café-restaurant which only served two dishes. We both had the superb shrimp and scallop yellow curry.

We strolled along the riverside, which is very much less spoiled than that of Tokyo, and headed into the east of the city where a larger proportion of traditional architecture remains, mostly comprising elegant two-storey wooden houses arranged along narrow alleys. Some of the houses had statues of badgers outside them, with giant distended testicles, due to the fact one of Kyoto's shinto temples is devoted to the animal, whose testes are believed to have magical powers.

We both agreed that Kyoto is a much more pleasant city to be in than Tokyo, in part because there is a greater sense of space (with the whole city bounded on three sides by beautiful mountains), and also because the people seem both happier and more relaxed. We'd planned to spend a while wandering the streets and taking in the atmosphere, but it got dark early and was very cold so we ended up in the Pig & Whistle, a reproduction of a British pub complete with beers on draft, a large area devoted to darts, and fish & chips on the menu. The Pig & Whistle was more authentically traditional than most in the UK these days, as smoking is still permitted indoors in Japan so we sat supping our bitter in a light haze of cigarette smoke and it was almost like being in my 20s again.

For dinner we went to Ashoka, the type of Indian restaurant that was traditional in England in the 1980s, and then to bed.