Pappy and Savannah on the train from Takanezawa to Utsunomiya.
Pappy and the kids transferring from the local train to the Shinkansen (Bullet Train). Denny is snacking as usual.
I was able to snap a picture of the marquee scrolling the stops along the way to Kyoto. I thought it would be neat to have the Kyoto listed.
Elin and Denny on the Shinkansen.
Picture of what we believe it Mt. Fuji. It is tough to get a clean shot of it on the shinkansen because you are going so fast that houses, buildings, telephone wires, etc get in the way all the time. It is really frustrating sometimes to try to take a picture from the train.
... Like I said, telephone poles, electrical wires, etc get in the way ALL THE TIME. It is cold here, but not as bad as home. We usually see low's in the 30's at night and it generally warms up during the day. Our house only sees about 3-4 hours of sun so when it goes away, the chill seeps in quickly. You can see the snow on the mountains in the picture.
After we got to Kyoto, we had a quick lunch and figured out that we didn't have much time left in the day. It seems like everything in Japan shuts down around 5:00 PM. If it isn't a restaurant, it is probably closed after 5:00. We decided to go to the Kyoto Zoo. This is obviously Denny and Savannah in one of the photo opportunity stands.
Male and female lion. I happen to catch an interesting movie of them but decided to not put it on the blog... We are thinking of going back next year to see if there are baby lions... What are the chances?
A picture of a swan through the trees.
I think these are lemurs. I kept thinking of the little guys on Madagascar and could not stop singing "I like to move it, move it... I like to move it, move it, I like to.... MOVE IT!!!" The guy on the right looks like he's got some issues.
Another photo op for the kids. Can you find Savannah?
Denny with one of the monkeys. He would move his hand and the monkey would follow with its foot. We had to try really hard to keep him from banging on the glass.
Elin thought this little guy... errrr, girl, looked like the shrunken head guy from the movie 'Beetlejuice'. Her head looks a little too small for her body...
Me, Pappy and the kids in front of the snow monkey exhibit.
Zebra... kind of obvious, right? Are they black with white stripes or white with black stripes? Look it up.
And yes, the rumors are correct. There are BEvERage machines in Japan. I thought I would add a beer section to this entry...
What is the difference between a 500 yen beer and a 650 yen beer? About double. Elin and I had a beer at the restaurant we went to the first night. I would say that I made the right choice when ordering.
View from the hotel the next morning. Our view wasn't that great, but I was able to capture the sun coming up over the mountains which was neat.
As we were walking to the Kyoto Tower, we saw a man standing next to a building 'guarding it'. We looked up and saw that he was there for the window washer. I am not sure if they still use this method in the U.S. but he looked like he was sitting on a small board with a rope attached washing windows.
Pappy checking out the sights at the Kyoto Tower.
A few of the pictures from the top of the tower...
A shot of Savannah at the top of the Kyoto Tower.
A shot of the whole family at the tower.
I took this picture through the telescopes that the tower provided for the visitors. They were free which is was a surprise to me. Unfortunately, we never made it to this section of Kyoto. If you go to Kyoto... you can spend a full week here and not run out of things to do.
Picture from outside the Kyoto tower. As you can see, we had great weather. Blue skies the whole day.
We hopped a bus to go sight-seeing. Denny took the first seat which was typically elevated. Looks excited, doesn't he?
Savannah also snagged a front seat.
Pappy and Elin on the bus. Looks excited, doesn't he?
I noticed the mirror on the bus and we were able to get a half-decent picture of ourselves.
This was the first Shrine that we visited. I took this picture of the huge Torii as we approached it. It is big, but I have some pictures below that show how big it really is...
You can see that the torii dwarfs this tree next to it.
This is a shot of the family under the torii showing how big it really is. Unbelievable.
Surprisingly, we saw many rickshaws in Kyoto. Elin appreciated the young men pulling them more than the rickshaws themselves... Not sure why. The lowest price I saw was 3000 yen ($36). I am not sure how for you can go on that, but needless to say, we passed since there were five of us and the rickshaws sat two people.
Savannah and Denny and I at the shrine.
Entrance into the shrine.
More pictures of the shrine,
Denny at the lion fountain.
One more shot of the first shrine.
After visiting the first shrine, we went to the Handcraft Building. I thought this samauri outfit was cool. I looked at the price tag and saw it was about 40,000 yen (about $480). After thinking about it for a minute and re-running the numbers, I looked again and realized I was wrong. It was 400,000 yen or $4800. Ouch.
Some of the samauri swords for sale at the handcraft building. I believe many of them were replicas from historic samaurai warriors.
I tried to take a picture down this small river and a woman happened to ride her bicycle into the picture. I thought it looked like a half-decent picture so I added it to the blog.
Denny chowing doen on kara-agi (fried chicken) and gohan (rice). Denny LOVES rice.
And of course, Savannah ordered her favorite - Japanese curry and rice.
We passed this small store and I thought it was interesting. 2011 is the year of the rabbit. This store literally sold only rabbits.
Entrance way into the gold temple. The hedges are what I believe to be some type of tree. We have these at Honda and they are literally 20-30 feet tall.
Picture of the rock gardens inside the temple.
Another picture of the rock garden. The rocks looked to be similar to sand but slightly more coarse. I was surprised to see that it held its shape the way it did.
Some pictures of the gardens at the gold temple.
A shot of Denny 'striking a pose'. I have yet to find anyone here that knows what the peace sign during picture taking means. As always, Denny like to emply it at all costs. 
The gold shrine had a path that you followed up the hillside and back down. This is a picture from the top of the path.
A shot of the bamboo wall and trees on the path back down the hill.
One of the bushes at the shrine. Remember, this is late December. There are plants that are flowering and many people STILL are working their gardens.
Elin and the kids coming down the path.
Another temple that we visited It was getting late in the day so this place cleared out quickly. As the sun went down, it got colder and colder.
We decided to walk a little and passed this place. jazz - OK, Blues - even better... what's with the 'Pignose'???
We saw this narrow road and had to take a walk on it. You can see the metal telephone pole is about 1/10 of the width.
At the top of the road, we saw this pagoda. It was too late for us to visit, but we did walk around the area a little. There were signes telling people that they were expected to vacate the area by 5:00 PM.
On the way up the narrow road, I saw this restaurant sign and thought it was funny. "Chinese Flyed Rise"?
I think this is an orange tree at the pagoda. Once again, it's late December.
We went to a yaki niku restaurant (grilled meat) after we stopped at the hotel. Denny literally got sick at the restaurant and he and Elin had to go back to the hotel. We had two-day bus passes, but had to give them away since we had to return early. We made a group of young Jaspanese men happy when we gave them a free day of bus passes. She looks sleepy, doesn't she?
A little better shot of Mt. Fuji on the way home.
One more for good measure...
Boarding the Shinkansen from Utsunomiya.
We had two cameras. The cameras assign file names so the next few shots are out of order. This one is Denny and Savannah at the Kyoto Tower. I will be honest that the whole time I was up there, all I could think about was an earthquake. Being that high up is scary enough...
So that's how you use a squatter!!! Wait a minute, they don't show his arms and how he is hanging on for dear life. And they don't show how he keep his pants out of the way when he squats down. I demand a refund!
And what is with the guy squatting on the western style toilet? Is our method that confusing?
Denny ringing the bell... at every shrine along the way.The Shinkansen from Tokyo pulling into the station.
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