Photos from Second Day in Kyoto

Nijo Castle

This castle was really special. It was built in 1603 and features amazing artwork. The walls patterns include some interesting randomized use of geometric shapes. It's amazing to see it within walls that are so structure. The castle features something called a Nightingale floor. It produces squeeks with every step that sounds kind of like birds singing. This was a form of alarm late at night. It was quite remarkable. The mechanics of the system are pretty ingenious. It's shown in the pamphlet I got there.

The detailed wood carvings were amazing. Click on this image.

Nijo Castle had some very nice gardens.

Here's Joanie in front of the Golden Pavilion or Rokuon-ji Temple. Amazing!

Before visiting the silver temple we had some food. There was a quaint italian bistro style place with patio seating and it was perfect for consumption of small pizzas like the one shown above and pastas. Everything was amazing. This was the some of the best pizza I've ever had for sure. It had nice thick salami slices on it. Fantastic.

Part of the zen garden at the Silver Temple or Ginkakuji Temple.

The amazing patterns are made in white sand.

Here's another shot of the amazing white sand shapes.

One of the temple buildings was being restored while we were there.

It's really amazing to see them work. I took so many photos of them.

The garden on the grounds of the Ginkakuji Temple were amazing.

It's something straight out of Crouching Tiger.

Really! How cute is this? Love it.

Have you ever seen this many orchids in one place?

Back in Gion looking for Geishas

This is the last shot I had of Kyoto. That night we shopped for breakfast. We had an 8am meeting time so we could catch another Shinkansen and head towards Kawaguchiko. In this photo we are heading towards out hotel where we planned to have conveyor belt sushi. Something happened and Josh, Laurren, Joanie and I lost Maya and Pam so we had the sushi a little later. It was a quiet night as we packed up all our clothes. We didn't feel like the tour was coming to an end, we really were ready to begin now that we had all got close. The next day on the train we had giant peanut butter and jam sandwiches. They sell bread here in half loaves. They are sliced about a 1/3 thicker than texas toast and they come in packages of 3, 4, 5 or 6... SLICES! And they don't have ends. Very crazy. Can you imagine a peanut butter and jam sandwich bigger than a hero burger hamburger? I can. I've seen it and eaten it. It went perfect with the diets we were all on while in Japan. We call it the all carb diet. haha.