Pictures from this weekend's trip to Kyoto!

It was super rainy, but Kyoto is beautiful. I think the pictures can describe what I saw better than I can so...




The batteries for my camera ran out on Saturday, so that kind of sucks, but I think I captured most of what I saw.

Ok, some background- for our culture class we took a trip to Kyoto. We left at 8:30 AM and took a tour bus (surprisingly comfortable) to our first stop -Kiyomizu temple. We walked around there and it was cool, and then we split into groups and went shopping and ate lunch. We met at Chionin shrine and walked around there for a while. At around 4:30 we checked in at the ryoukan. The ryoukan (Japanese style inn) that we stayed at was freaking AMAZING! Tatami mats, futons (super comfortable!), gorgeous 15 course meals (Laura and I got vegetarian ones), cute old ladies in kimonos, Japanese robes for everyone, ahhhh, it was amazing. They had a public bath as well, but that's not my sort of thing. Laura has pictures of the ryoukan, I'll have to get those from her soon. There was karaoke at dinner-that was pretty awesome. After dinner, we messed around, visiting the nearby convenience store, some people taking public baths. I went to bed pretty late that night, and had to wake up at 7:45am for breakfast the next morning. Breakfast was pretty awesome too, but I couldn't fully appreciate it as I was mostly asleep. When we checked out of the ryoukan, some of the staff held up a banner saying "thank you!" and bowed and waved; it was really cute. I was in a bit of a daze that day, so I don't really remember where we went, but I do remember being disgusted by a public toilet. Anyway, I'm back now, and I have to get back to my homework.
I miss all of you, and I can't wait to see you in December!
-Jonathan