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

   We're leaving for Yokohama in a half hour, and I'm desperately trying to upload pics from our hard drive so that I can finish blogging about Andrew's trip some time this weekend before I fly out on Sunday. Today has been a whirlwind of trying to pack, working, cleaning, baking an apple pie, and chasing Wasabi after she bites me in an attempt to get some attention!
 So, without further ado, here's the first part of our day trip to Kyoto. We hopped on the bullet train around 8 am, arriving in Kyoto at almost 11. I quickly got us onto a bus bound for Kinkakuji (The Golden Pavillion), only to discover that it was going the reverse direction, so our trip took about 20 minutes longer than expected. Oops. But, we still made pretty good time looking around Kinkakuji (I was trying to get in trips to 3 shrines/temples plus a decent lunch, all in the span of 9 hours). It's a gorgeous temple and well worth the hassle of dealing with masses of fellow tourists. There was a light drizzle when we got there, but nothing strong enough to detract from the beauty of the temple itself and the surrounding gardens. 
 If you want to know more about the temple itself, feel free to Wiki it, since I don't have the time to write about it now unfortunately!

    Thanks for subsidizing our trip, Dad!