Kyoto Part 1

As most of you already know, Stephen and I went to Japan the beginning of May. It was a really nice trip. It was kind of chilly and rainy most of the time, but still fun and beautiful. Here are a few things I learned on my trip...

• Most of Japan is uninhabited (around 70%) so the population is concentrated in metropolitan areas.
• Japanese people are "sensitive to the seasons" as described by our tour guide, they love all seasons.
• There are TONS of Shinto shrines in Japan.
• Japan is really expensive
• Japanese food is good in the U.S. but even better in Japan!
• Geishas are NOT prostitutes.
  
• Japan has the most amazing public transportation
• Japanese make amazing toilets with heated seats, built in bidets, and musical flushes.
• A bonsai tree is not just a small tree, it is any tree in a pot.
  

Overall, it was a wonderful trip. We were there for 5 days and I don't feel like we even scratched the surface. Here are some pictures
Dave and Jane (Stephen's Parents) got us plane tickets with their skymiles which was very very nice of them. The purpose of our trip was actually to visit my family in Singapore, but since it was cheaper to get tickets through Japan, we thought it would be nice to spend some time there. We only spent one day in Japan with Dave and Jane because they went to Thailand for a week with my sister-in-law Melissa before visiting my family in Singapore.
Here we are with Giro, a friend of Jane's family. He flew up from Okinawa to Tokyo to meet us and then planned our trip to Kyoto. We are at a Shogun palace. It was pretty cool. The floors inside are called "nightingale floors" because when you step on them they are supposed to sound like a nightingale. It was designed as a defense mechanism.We visited a lot of beautiful Japanese gardens in Kyoto. It is amazing that the gardeners put in so much time and effort into planning how to manipulate the trees to get them to look how they want. This is just one example of how they pulled the branches of this tree lower to the ground.
According to our tour guide Japanese try to "miniaturize everything" he said that the pond in this garden is made to represent a sea and seashore. According to him the big rocks are cliffs and rocks found along coastlines. It was really a beautiful garden.

Red Japanese Maple trees are my new favorite trees. They take a long time to grow as big as the one in the picture. There are also Green Japanese Maples in the picture, in the fall they turn the same color red as the Red Maples.
Here is a cute picture of Dave and Jane.We could always tell we were in the right place when we would see herds of Japanese school children. I think their uniforms are so cute. These are barrels of Sake, Japanese wine. They were donated by Sake makers to a Shinto temple.


Here I am trying to imitate the school children.

A beautiful crane on an island surrounded by irises. And perfectly manicured trees.


This is the golden pavilion in Kyoto, one of its most famous sites. On the top of the golden pavilion is a Phoenix, which is quite fitting for a building that has been burnt down several times. Because many of the temples and shrines were built out of wood, many of them have burnt down and been rebuilt. This one was rebuilt around the 1950s to the original design after burning down.


Beautiful lotus flowers.

Here is Jane getting close to the Lilly pads.

We had lunch at the cutest little restaurant. It was in this small ally-way and we would have never known it was there if our guide hadn't shown it to us. It was very delicious. These small rooms that people eat in were surrounding a beautiful courtyard with manicured trees and water features.
Here are Stephen and Jane with a big tori gate. Tori gates are a sign that a Shinto shrine is near by.