Dinner the first night in Tokyo – a Tonkatsu restaurant in the top floor of a mall near our hotel.

Michelle enjoying some soup at Tsukiji Market

A canal boat (mockup) at the Fukagawa Edo Museum. They had lots of antiques, including a 300-year old abacus and business ledger that they let us handle!

Chris in front of the famous “Kaminarimon” entrance to the temple at Asakusa. The shopping arcade here is a 400+ year old tourist trap.

Michelle enjoying some spicy ramen at Kikanbo in Tokyo. We got low and medium heat – I’d probably go a little hotter next time!

It rained lightly all day when we visited Himeji Castle. It kept the visitor count down! It was also rather chilly that day, and we had to take our shoes off in the castle – my feet got very cold on the hardwood floors!

The stairs between levels of the castle are very steep! Hence all the signs to watch your head.

We had dinner at Tanoshimi – a lovely sake bar in Kyoto. This might have been the highlight of the whole trip!

Nara is famous for its tame deer near Todai-ji temple.

Michelle ritually purifying herself in the incense smoke outside the temple.

The statue is usually just referred to as “the big buddha”.

We found a very nice shop in Nara selling takoyaki.

Another temple we visited after the big buddha was a little harder to find the entrance to! Luckily a local showed us the way.

After buying some sake from a local manufacturer, we walked some back alleys to Koruri Cafe, a little curry shop. It was fantastic!

As we left, the owners gave us some beautiful origami deer

They like deer in Nara.

We had pretty good weather for visiting the famous golden pavilion of Kinkaku-ji temple. We got there pretty early, so it wasn’t too crowded yet.

The temple’s gardens were also very nice.

There were some food stalls set up outside Kitano Tenmangu shrine. This is a “taiyaki”.

The entry gate into Nijo Castle in Kyoto.

A view of Kyoto from Kiyomizu-dera temple. Kyoto has many famous Buddhist temples – this is one of the more popular for its city view.

The silver pavilion of Ginkaku-ji temple is a lot less impressive than Kinkaku-ji’s golden pavilion, but the grounds around it are my favorite. It even snowed on us a little that day!

They had some sand sculptures at Ginkakuji, in the style of a rock garden.

We also visited the other “big buddha” – this time the one in Kamakura. See Michelle for scale. This one also used to be indoors, until a tsunami tore the structure away. The statue was built in the 1250’s, and the hall was destroyed in 1334, 1369 and finally again in 1498 by an earthquake. It’s been an open air statue for the 500 years since then.

We went back to Tsukiji on the last morning for more sushi. Michelle really enjoyed the otoro tuna.