After two wonderful days in Kyoto, Japan, we finally made it back to Tokyo… back to my laptop so I can write about it.

When I first traveled to Tokyo, I expected to see a country out of an Akira Kurosawa film. Maybe it was too much to expect to see samurai walking the streets, but I was hoping for more culture and history. While I can’t say I was disappointed with Tokyo, it was evident that the city was trying to win the title of most modern city in the world. If Japan had a “living culture”, it wasn’t going to be found in Tokyo.

On this trip, two of my coworkers and myself booked a bullet train (shinkensen) ticket down to Kyoto from Tokyo. It took about three hours to get down there, and from my GPS receiver, we hit about 160 miles per hour. Even at that speed, the ride was amazingly smooth and comfortable.

The way Kyoto (actually, all of Japan) is laid out is wherever God decided not to put a mountain, the Japanese built a city. Kyoto is a flat area surrounded by mountains, and as such was considered defensible. This is why it was the capital of Japan for centuries.

Once we arrived, we checked into our hotel, and then we traveled to the Rokuon-ji Temple, home of the famous Golden Pavilion. That’s me up there standing across the pond from it. Most of the temples we visit had interesting structures, but even more amazing gardens. The Japanese garden is a beautiful concept of guiding the natural growth in trees, and every garden around the shrines were beautifully maintained without being gaudy.

After Rokuon-Ji, we walked to Ryoanji temple, which is famous for a beautiful Zen rock garden. As with all the temples, we removed our shoes and sat down with our backpacks and cameras at our feet. It was a disgustingly hot and humid day, so it was a welcome break to take a few minutes in the shade to look at the garden.

Thankfully, like Tokyo, Kyoto is covered with vending machines selling iced cold green tea, and Pocari Sweat. Every few minutes, we would stop and grab a bottle of green tea, which made the hot day tolerable. Thank God for cold showers.

The next morning easily surpassed the previous day, as we headed to Nijo Castle, home of the Shogun of Japan since it was built in 1603. We were able to walk through the original building, and I was amazed that every room had a hallway between the room and the outer wall, and that the floors of the hallway were designed to squeak, so they sounded like birds chirping whenever anyone walked on them. This was designed to protect the Shogun from assassins.

The entire castle compound was surrounded by a moat, and I was able to climb the walls to get a good view of what a defending soldier would see as they found off attackers. The castle was clearly designed as the ultimate protection in a ground-based war.

Finally, our time was running short, and at the advice of a friend, we headed to Ginkakuji, home of the Silver Pavilion. While the Golden Paviolion is covered in gold leaf, the original had burned down and was replaced in the 1950s. The Silver Pavilion, while not covered in silver, nevertheless is the original building, dating back to 1482. Personally, I enjoyed this temple, and the surrounding gardens, much better than any of the other shrines.

After touring our final shrine, we hopped on a bus back to Kyoto station with ten minutes to spare. I think we all fell asleep on the train home. I was finally able to get the pictures online, so please check them out. There are others in my coworkers cameras that I’ll post as I get copies of them.