Japan Day 8 - We're just not that cultured....

 So we discovered something about ourselves on this trip. We're just not that cultured. Some of you are going to read this entry and shake your fist at the screen going "Curse those Stolaszes! I'd give ANYTHING to go to Japan and they didn't even appreciate it!". Ok, Ok, we did kind of appreciate it. I mean I appreciated Tokyo Disney A LOT, so that counts for something, and I dig green tea ice cream. It's just that if you've seen a Shinto shrine or an Imperial Japanese Palace, you really have seen them all. As a matter of fact, there's a Shinto shrine AND a palace structure in the Japan pavilion at Epcot so you can see them both in the states and save yourself like 10 grand! (Aren't you glad you know me?). Anyway, we kind of found out that we should probably stick to beaches and theme parks when it comes to vacationing so that's good to know.

We started out the day at some "Castle" in Kyoto. Now when I think "Castle" I start thinking about turrets and princesses and moats and giant haunches of meat spitted and roasting in huge fire pits and tapestries and dungeons. You know, a CASTLE. In Japan a castle is a large horizontal complex with outer hallways, empty rectangular rooms and sliding doors. So this Castle had a really cool garden but our guide thought it would be much, MUCH better to look at 258 consecutive, identical, empty rooms in this sprawling building and skip the gardens. "This is the empty square room where the scribes worked, and this is the empty square room where the Emperor slept, and this is the empty square room where they washed vegetables....." Fascinating! Like would it kill you to set up a diorama of what life was like in the empty rooms?

Next we went to the famed "Golden Pavillion". There was a huge gong that I did NOT get to ring. Would have made the day much more exciting...

 So this is where I'll probably start losing people. I mean it's the FAMOUS  Golden Pavilion right? What you don't see is that I am standing in a crowd of about 10,00000000 people all nudging me and trying to get the same shot so that makes it a little less special.

 The kids at the Golden Pavilion. At this point Jeff goes: "Yup, that's a golden Pavilion all right. Want to get some Green Tea Ice cream?"
Me: Fo Sho.

 Lovely gardens: (See, I appreciate them.)

 Jeff attempts to summon his inner "Zen-ness". The ice cream helped.

 Next we went to the Imperial Palace of Kyoto which is only open 2 days a year, and today was one of those days. Lucky Us! So we got to shuffle in a packed mob of people through this compound with empty square rooms and gates and stuff. None of it really stood out.

 A rare moment where we emerged into a couryard and got a bit of space. Then we were funneled back into the tour route and had to do the shoulder to shoulder shuffle again. I think there is a Samurai Dude in this picture acting something out:

 I did really like the Japanese Gardens. That was actually way better than the buildings if you ask me...

 And the Cherry Blossoms were lovely:

 So then they took us to another Shinto Shrine. It was red.

 Love the trees where the  flowers cascade down like this:

 Poser!

 Again, they walked us through the gardens but this is the crowd level. I mean you couldn't stop and look at things or walk at a normal stride because it was so darn crowded.

 Last stop on the tour was some Shrine or Castle or Temple (take your pick - I forget...) high up on a hill. At this point we were like "Whew! Wouldn't have wanted to miss this!" and blazed through it to get ahead of another Mob and then wandered through a little shopping district.

 The kids were awesome. I mean we did a great job pretending that it was all very, very interesting and exciting and they bought it to some extent. What great tourists they are. Of course at their age they'll always find some cool angle and it's never what you'd expect. Here Sasha is pretending to hold up this thing with her head because it's exactly her size:

After this we took a cab back to the train station and caught another bullet train back to Tokyo. Sasha and I snuck into a store and got Teddy a cake and some "Pocky" sticks to act as candles and we had a little B-day celebration on the bullet train. Check out the video HERE.