The Kennedy's Tour Asia - Kyoto, Japan

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At the end of their tour, the fam went to Japan. Again, I was working, so I took another long weekend and only had time to spend in Kyoto. (I am returning to Japan next week, so stay tuned!). I really liked Kyoto. It's probably my favourite city over here so far. It has a really nice vibe to it, where modern day living meets a variety of tradition. This city was just really clean and everything seemed "convenient", for lack of a better word.

We saw the Imperial Palace (well, the outside of it), the Golden Pagoda (that's not the "real" name, but you get the gist), a national treasure of 1000 Buddha's, a Zen rock garden temple, a casino and some night life, to name a few things.

The Imperial Palace was a large square, with the actual palace walled of in the center. You were not allowed to enter, and Doug actually managed to set off an alarm because he got too close to the wall. Of course, he got to close by jumping over a small moat, but that's beside the point...

The Golden Pagoda was really cool. The whole park was a beautiful garden and eventually the path led to a spot where you turned the corner to see a placid pond in front of a bright yellow, glistening, gold-coated pagoda. That baby must be worth a few bucks. It has recently been restored. Sadly, my camera ran out of battery here. I need to get those from mom's camera still.

The "Thousand Bronze Buddha's" were exactly what it sounds like. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos of them due to the flash, etc., and also so they could sell little books at the end, haha. (Which I bought). There was also a very large, elaborate "central Buddha" in the middle, and twelve statues of various gods.

The casino was definitely something to behold. The games were hilarious. There were so many massive, electronic-style gambling games that you didn't know where to start. It had about six floors for a regular arcade, a place to "leave the kids", a slot floor, a bingo-type floor, a sports and horses floor, etc. It was all very overwhelming.

Doug and I also went out one night (we had to get some time away from the parents!) to check out the night life. There was one main road that all the good bars were along. My favourite was a tiny little whiskey bar with two really nice bartenders who did martini shaking tricks, etc., and were generally just pleasant to chat with.

That concludes the family trip through Asia! Stay tuned!

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Photos

Dinner
This was a small, hard to find restaurant recommended in the Frommer's travel guide where you deep fry all sorts of things right at your table.