In Which We Don't Take Very Many Pictures (But We're Still in Japan!)

So, our last day in Japan was a fairly quiet one. Let my start by saying two things. First, Nancy decided that she didn't want to write about this day, so I'm doing it instead. Second, if you're ever given a choice between a Japanese breakfast and a western breakfast, CHOOSE THE WESTERN ONE. Our hotel offered both, and we had the western breakfast every other day, but Nancy said that for the cultural experience we had to try the Japanese breakfast at least once. I suppose it was a cultural experience, but it was not a delicious one. We're talking very fishy fish, tasteless rice porridge, a salad that looked like it had thousand island dressing on it (my least favorite) and a barely-cooked boiled egg (something that is popular there but which I think is nasty.). So yeah, take my word for it, and don't do it.

Anyway, we had decided that we definitely wanted to see the old imperial palace, but learned on the Internets that you could only get in with a guided tour. It was free, so we went down and signed up for the one in the afternoon. After that we took a bus down to the Kyoto National Museum, which was pretty cool. Their regular collection wasn't available because of construction, but they had a special exhibit available, and it was pretty cool. It had a bunch of artifacts and paintings and things from leisure activities in ancient Japan. Like I've said before, I'm fascinated by Japanese history, so I thought it was way interesting. After that we caught a bus back to the imperial palace and I thought we were running late, so we hiked through the park at top speed, but when we got to the gate, I realized that I had read my watch wrong and we were almost an hour early. Awesome. Fifty minutes wasn't really enough time to do anything, so we had lunch and then went to our tour. It was actually pretty cool. The palace really wasn't a whole lot to look at, especially since they don't let you inside, but the tour guide spoke pretty good English and she told us some really interesting things about the palace, and how things worked there and some of the history around it. I really enjoyed it. Here are some pictures, bearing in mind that I had to work hard to not get other people in them, as there were a lot of people in our tour group.

According to the tour guide, visiting nobles parked their chariots here. 

Vermillion (which I would just call orange) is some kind of lucky color.

This is looking in at the front of the most important building where all the ceremonies were held. This was as close as we were allowed to get.

This is the main gate of the palace complex, which only the emperor or other very, very important people were allowed to use.

This is the gate the empress was allowed to use. Apparently she and the emperor didn't actually live together. Go figure.

I was one of the three people who were able to get this picture without random people in it.

This is where the emperor hung out and took care of state business.

Sweet gardens. This is my, "I'm learning about history and I'm loving it!" face.

After the imperial palace we jumped on the subway (I think I mentioned before that I think the subway is cool.) and headed over to a cool-sounding temple called Daitoku-ji. Turned out it wasn't all that cool. The landscaping was nice, but there really wasn't all that much to see there, as there were signs that said, "No sight-seeing" all over the place. We did see one kind of cool garden. Here are a couple pictures.

According to our tour guide back at the palace, this is a zen garden, because it doesn't have any water. Makes sense, as our guidebook said that this was a zen temple.

This is my, "The guidebook made something sound awesome but it was really only mediocre. AGAIN." face.

For some reason this door was mini.

So, after checking out Daitoku-ji, we headed back to the Subway station. On the way we found a vending machine that had pink cider in it. Turns out it was delicious.

Unfortunately, we don't think they have it in Korea. Also, here's a picture of us on the subway:

That evening we mostly just shopped for souvenirs. I got a sweet katana (samurai sword) keychain, and we got a screen painting thing and also a painted fan that's really pretty. Someday our house will have all sorts of authentic Japanese decor. Also, while we were out I found one of the things I've missed the most here in Asia--A slurpee! Or at least what amounted to one. I had to take a picture of it, even though I knew it would turn out awful:

It was delicious. At any rate, we had dinner and went to bed early. The next morning we got up around 4:00 so we could take a taxi to catch our train to the airport to catch our flight. It was a sweet trip! I'll share a few more thoughts I have on it in my next post, I think. I'll leave it here for now. This is Captain Danger out.