Kyoto-Day 2

Our second day in Kyoto had been pretty much planned for us; we were scheduled for a tour (in English) of some of the major sites the city had to offer. We headed down to the lobby and met two other families from our hotel. I thought this was going to be the whole tour group, but then we ended up picking up a bus load of people as we headed over to Nijo Castle. Our tour guide was this tiny little woman who was so cute! I can't remember her name now though. Like with Yoko when I went to Kamakura, it was nice having this woman with us to explain the history of what we were seeing especially in Kyoto because history is such a big part of the city. Our first stop was Nijo Castle. We had gone there the night before to see the trees lit up, but today we were able to inside the buildings and walk around the grounds a little bit more.

Most of what we saw inside the buildings were living quarters for the Shogun who lived there so many years ago. The floors were squeaky and sounded like birds chirping. They were built this way to prevent sneak attacks on the Shogun living inside from enemies. How clever! We couldn't take pictures of the inside, but there were several large rooms for sleeping, meeting, and and storing weapons.

The Castle had areas of pretty gardens and ponds all around it.

Here's the moat that I just had to get a picture of! We had just a couple miuntes to walk around the outside of the castle after the tour of the inside, so we ran over here to see if the trees and blossomed overnight, but they hadn't.

Our next stop was the Golden Pavilion. It was a shirne and sure was golden! It was really the only major thing to take pictures of at this stop, so I took about ten pictures of the shrine at every angle! I took some others too of the flowers and trees around it, and of this crane we saw in the water.

Our final stop of the tour was the Imperial Palace. It used to be the home of the emperor before he moved his Palace over to Tokyo.

These were the doors that were inside some of the rooms in the Palace. I think I heard that they're the originals and have been keep in such good condition all these years.

More orange! It did look a little out of place here with all of the brown and gray of the other buildings.

Here's a tree with pretty blossoms!

Our tour ended around noon so we had lunch on our own. We had about an hour and a half until we could take a shuttle bus back to our hotel, so we search for a little while before finding this little cafe. The waiter saw us looking and the menu and ran outside to tell us about a great lunch deal he had for us, all for just 500 yen (like $5)!

It actually did turn out to be a really good deal. We each got a small cup of either coffee or tea with a muffin on one plate and then another plate with squash soup, bananas, a croissant, raisin bread, a hard boiled egg, and a pickled plum. It was delicious! We talked to the waiter for a while and learned that he had lived in Ann Arbor a few years ago! Crazy!

After lunch we walked around the area before catching the bus back. I had to go to the bathroom but nothing seemed to be open or looked like they would have one for public use. Finally, we found this run-down looking building that was huge and would for sure have a bathroom. My first guess was that the building was a homeless shelter or some kind of disaster relief shelter. It was in pretty bad shape and there were piles of clothes and garbage everywhere and posters all over the walls. A girl about our age saw us come in and showed Lori and I where a bathroom was. Mike talked to her while he waited for us and learned that she had lived in Grand Rapids for a year and had gone to Calvin College during that time. Another crazy coincidence!

We took the shuttle bus back to our hotel and grabbed our bags to head back to school. Coming back, we took the Shinkansen again. I stayed awake for most of the trip and we saw this great view of Mt. Fuji! It's huge!