Kyoto

We went to see many more temples for the next couple of days, we saw the geisha street and I got a couple of pictures of them! Then we went to show where we saw traditional tea ceremony, dancing, plays and flower arranging. We saw a very famous temple with a bridge and to my great delight there were geisha doing a photo shoot. So of course I grabbed the opportunity to take some more pictures. The most interesting shrine was the 1000 tori gate temple. We didn't climb up the whole mountain but we did do a small tour. We got a lot of good pictures and saw quite a few friendly temple cats (I will update with full information later). The last day we went to the shrine near our house. It was beautiful, it was the largest I've seen. There were many buildings connected and at the front we got to feed lots of nearly tame pigeons who would fly up into your hands to eat from your palm of even eat right from your fingers. It was lots of fun! Then we saw it's sister shrine down the road. We then went back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and took the Shinkansen home.

Osaka, the last day

Today was the last day of being in Osaka. We checked out, left the big suitcase with the front desk and went out to look at the last day of the big Golden Week sales. Today was a shopping day for omiyage and for souvenirs for friends. I also wanted to check out some electronics.
We got there at 10 am and found out we were still too early. Everything in the area opens at 11 am. So we went into a Mr. Donut and wasted some time with a donut and some water.
We started wandering around at 11 am and many shops were still not open. We looked at Japanese anime stores and random electronic goods. Though there were some decent deals for very old stuff, most electronics were still very expensive.
After we moved onto the big main shopping area of Osaka again. We looked at some stores where we had been two days before but now there were less people. We ended up going into America Town and it was funny to see Japanese people trying to look North American even though we would never wear such clothes. We ate some decent Indian curry for lunch.
Then we slowly made our way back to the hotel. We picked up our suitcase and took the train to Kyoto. The last leg of our trip! Nooooo.... It's going by so fast!
The hotel in Kyoto is really nice, it's called the Costa del Sol, and despite it's name is a Japanese style hotel, similar to a ryokan but more modern.

Western Japan trip

Well today we leave for our great western Japan trip! It's currently pouring rain in Yokosuka, however it looks like it's going to be fairly warm and sunny for the rest of the time in Hiroshima, Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto!

Everything is packed, the house is clean and I'm just making the final preparations.