Kyoto, Day 3. Last Full Day in Kyoto!

Hey guys, guess where I finally am? :D

Ikebukuro is a a subsection of Tokyo. It is also the setting of one of my favorite anime. A lot of my excitement about Ikebukuro will be lost on non-nerds.

BUT, instead of talking about how I got Ikebukuro and my first official evening in Tokyo, I'm going to have to backtrack to catch all of you guys up on all the other the things I've done this week. Sorry. I promise I will gush about Ikebukuro soon!

 Our last full day in Kyoto was almost mind numbingly busy. Our schedule started off the day with our much-anticipated visit to the Kyoto Imperial Palace! Our hotel (The Palace Side Hotel) is directly across the street from the Palace grounds, but high walls and greenery keep the palace from being seen. Yesterday was our chance to see all across the Palace grounds, and even get a small peek inside.

However, before we hopped-skipped-and-jumped over to the Palace, we got sidetracked by a small local shrine down the street. It was a shrine dedicated to the myth of an old hero who was saved by a pack of boars. The praying for your foot and back health at this shrine is said to to be particularly helpful.

After checking that nifty little place out, we headed straight for the Palace.

For those who don't know, the Kyoto Imperial Palace is the Old Palace. It was in use during the time of the Shogun rule in Japan, between 1600 and 1864. During this time, the emperor really had little compared to the Shogun lords, but he was still a great and revered symbol in Japanese society. This Palace is still used time to time for festivals and celebrations. The current emperor, Akito, lives in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, which is where the emperor's moved after they regained power from the Shoguns in 1864.

Now, pictures!

Some of the plum blossoms were in bloom on the grounds! We thought we'd be too early in the season to see anything, Sakura or plum blossom, so just like at the Shogun castle this was really cool.

One of many ceremonial gates for the palace.

A peek inside. This is one of the waiting rooms for people seeking an audience with the emperor. This room, decorated with paintings of cranes, was meant for middle class people like merchants, minor lords and the like. The Shoguns got a room decorated with Tigers, while the peasants room was decorated with Cherry trees.

The Palace was made up of a number of buildings of various sizes and fancy-ness.

As you can plainly see, Japanese Palaces are fairly plain in style. No flashy paint, just natural beautiful wood. In fact, the imperial palace should a lot of restraint when compared to the Shogun castles, which were quite a bit flashier.

Now to my favorite part of the palace - the garden.

This was a little island on the palace pond.

One of the many porch-entrances to the palace.

The garden had a few pretty stone bridges.

We found flowering trees! The white flowers are plum blossoms, which bloom a few weeks before most Sakura trees.

Proof that I'm actually there. I didn't just rip these pictures off the internet to pretend!

I had fun taking close up photos of the blossoms.

I really loved the palace, can you tell?

After we finished our tour there, we carted ourselves off to Tofukuji Temple. However, before I get on to that particular picture dump, I should tell you guess about what the weather was like this day. It was insane! First off, we woke up in the morning to snow. Only a little, but enough to powder the roofs a little. The snow stopped shortly after we left for the day, and it actually became partly sunny and reasonably warmer.But once we got to the temple the weather was having a complete crisis with it's self. Stated on-and-off rain-snowing while the sky was still mostly sunny and bright blue. It left me hopelessly confused about wether I was too warm, too cold, or too damp at any given moment. Please try to picture this ridiculaous weather as you look at the pictures of the temple.

Apparently in Autumn these Japanese maple trees are all a gorgeous bright red.

See those white flecks on the temple building there? Yeah, my camera's not poor quality, that is actually snow. About five minutes after this picture was taken it was sunny again.

See?

Zen Rock garden at the temple.

Some Sakura blooms!

There are a lot of beautiful rock structures in Japanese gardens and temple grounds.

A piece of the temple from below.

Leaving the temple now! There were a lot of these pretty little twisty staircases.

After the long walk through the temple. Dr. Huang said we had one more shrine to go too. My feet and legs were aching from all the walking we'd been doing all week, but I was enthusiastic nonetheless. Shrine were nice. Nice and usually small and quick, so really one more would be such a big deal.

(IT'S A TRAP.)

 Unfortunately, this shrine was definately not "just one more shrine", this shrine was a hugely important and famous shrine celebrating the god of the harvest. It was big and beautiful and impressive and it's path lead us all the way up a mountain. Dr. Huang somehow failed to mention this when he brought as to this "one last shrine".

An accurate depiction of Dr. Huang.

Granted, the view from the rest points on the mountain were spectacular. But an awesome view isn't much comfort when you've been speed walking across Kyoto in bizarre weather all day.

We did, eventually make it all the way up to the top. Somehow.

And because Japan is a wonderful country, there was a place to buy soft-serve ice cream about half way up this trail. (Fun fact: in Japan, there is Soft serve ice cream EVERYWHERE.)

Granted, I did get all these awesome pictures of the mountain shrines and the view out of it. If I had been less exhausted that day, I might have even been willing to take this hike. The mountain is peaceful, the views are amazing and the shrines along the way are one of a kind.

 After over two hours of surprise hiking, we finally left the shrine and caught the bus back to the hotel.

Look how innocent it looks. Don't be fooled. This shrine had my legs and feet screaming in pain by the end of the day. I literally hobbled all the way to the hotel.

Words cannot describe the joy I felt when we were finally here again, at are friendly, cozy little hotel.

We we got back to spend our last night in Kyoto, I took a long, hot bath in the hotel room. It was glorious. Japanese bathrooms are all set up to be extremely bath-friendly. The tub has high walls and a the ability to be filled up to the brim, and the floor of the room is set up like the inside of a shower - slightly slanted with drains along the walls to take care of spillages. After a long rough hike like that, this bath was particularly rewarding.

And that was it for our days in Kyoto! Tomorrow I'll catch you up on or day in Hiroshima and Miyajima!

Night everyone! <3