Yesterday, I took a day trip to Kyoto. It's one of the major touristy cities in Japan and is only an hour and a half by train from Himeji. I went with Suvanya ("Sue"), a JET from South Africa who lives in our building. We didn't have any major plans, just wanted to see a few sites. We certainly accomplished that!
We first went to Fushimi Inari, a Shinto shrine with hundreds of red torii gates (the toriis generally indicate that it's a Shinto shrine, rather than a Buddhist temple). It was amazing - scenes from Memoirs of a Geisha were filmed there. There were several main buildings,
All along the way are lots of statues of foxes and little praying places (don't really know how to describe them otherwise)
After visiting the shrine, we headed back towards central Kyoto and saw a Buddhist temple there. We weren't allowed to take photos inside, but it wasn't really as stunning as Fushimi Inari was. Then we stopped at a beautiful Japanese garden to wander around until our feet were too sore. Rain looked imminent, so we headed back to the amazing Kyoto station (really incredible architecture - very modern) for some window shopping and to look for the observation level (which Lonely Planet said was on the mysterious and apparently non-existent 15th floor). Just as we got to our train platform, it started pouring! There are still lots of sites to be seen in Kyoto, so I plan to make several more day trips there!
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