December 21

After a 3.5 hour ride on the 200mph Shinkensen (bullet train) we arrived in historical Kyoto. The ride unleashed sights of great mountains, vast farm land, and remote towns in between the two. It was nice to know there is countryside away from the city, a reminder that most of the hectic happenings are concentrated in pockets across the country. Approximately an 8 hour drive west of Tokyo, Kyoto, with a population of 1.7 million, is another one of these pockets. Kyoto’s impressiveness is in its combination of modern skyscrapers, department stores and a downtown business district with the historical Japan that one imagines from the stories in fairytales. You can be on a busy street lined with trendy shops, sports stores, and high tech stores and turn down an alley that holds a beautifully raked Zen garden, an ancient temple, or a Shogun’s castle dating back to the 7th century. There is so much to see that perhaps 3 months would allow you to scrape the surface of Kyoto’s beauty, but we’ve got four days.