Kyoto Castle

Today was an easy day...sort of.  The down side is that it was raining pretty good this morning.  The up side is that we had half a day of touring and half a day of our own time with a terrific dinner at night.

So we visited Kyoto Castle this morning, also known as Nijo-Jo.  The castle grounds and the castle itself are well-preserved. It is the shogun’s castle with beautiful gates, and inside are well-preserved wall paintings.  Very different from castles as we know them in the western world.



We could not take any pictures inside.  The grounds are immaculate, complete with ponds and bridges.


And there is a moat, just like we’d see in the western world, complete with koi (well, maybe not them).


We took the subway to the castle and back.  We thought this was interesting.  An architectural image of the subway station we were in.


So the afternoon was spent with Gerard going down to the hot tub in the hotel, and having a snooze.  While I went out for a good walk around a large block.  It is very safe in Japan.  People don’t have a problem sending their kids to school via public transit, or walking down streets all by themselves.  I wonder what’s happened in our society that we can’t do that.  There are about 1.5 million people here in Kyoto and people are comfortable letting their kids do this.  Some of the kids I saw are no more than 7 or 8.

We went out for dinner to a VERY nice Italian restaurant.  Well, sort of Italian, Japanese style.  Each course was very small in size, but there were several courses.  But it’s no wonder you don’t see very many overweight Japanese people.  Just enough to eat.  This was dessert.  Yum.


And the cutlery was laid out so nicely.  I’d like some of those little holder things.

So we’ll be heading off to our last stop very soon.  Sayonara, Kyoto.

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