Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

  I'm still trying to desperately catch up with posting about sightseeing last weekend in Kyoto and Uji, but Andrew (my brother) just arrived last night, and we've already got a ton of new photos from yesterday and today that I want to put up, too! I've decided to keep everything in chronological order, but these next few posts about last weekend will likely be short, since there won't be much time to write for the next couple of weeks.
  These pics are from my morning walk in Uji, last Sunday. Yuki was still asleep, so I snuck out early and enjoyed the scenery for a while before the rest of the tourists could start pouring into town.
Our hotel, Aiso, was perfectly situated in Uji: right on the river and only about 2 minutes away from Byodoin on foot. Location and a good restaurant are really the only positive points I could note about that place, though (oh, and the owners were really kind)...otherwise it was unfortunately quite a dump! The bath was quite dirty, and our room didn't have a lock on the door, although it did boast various random objects and an incredibly offensive smell in the closet. I'm not exactly sure what the random objects were, since the stench led me to close the door as soon as I opened it! A few of the rice paper windows were also missing the glass outside, so we could hear everything on the street, and it was a rather cold night! Not exactly the relaxing evening we'd imagined, but we survived, so no harm done overall, I guess....

                                    The 'lock' that we ended up using for the door

                                                    View of the 'street' that our hotel was on
                                       View of the river from the street pictured above




  Next up....Byodoin!