Kyoto Escapades -- Day 2

After a good night's sleep, we hit the road running with another student tour guide, Satoshi. After a quick ride on the subway, we arrived at Nijo Castle.

Nijo Castle was the home to the Tokugawa shogun. It is built almost entirely of Japanese cypress and has many woodcarvings and paintings by the Kano School on sliding doors. The main building, Ninomaru Palace, has 33 rooms and more than 800 tatami mats. All the sliding doors on the outside walls of the castle can be removed in summer to allow the breeze to cool the castle. One of the neatest features of the castle is its nightingale floors. To protect the shogun from intruders who managed to cross the moat and scale the stone wall, special floorboards that creaked when walked upon were installed throughout the castle. The creak is high-pitched, and it truly does sound like a little bird. When the shogunate government was abolished in 1868, the Emperor took over the castle. The Emperor later donated the castle to the City of Kyoto.

The outer guard tower for the castle.

The moat and stone wall protecting the castle. It is crazy how this is just sitting in the middle of Kyoto!

The outside of the Ninomaru Palace.

And us in front of the Palace. RJ thought the helicopter was much more interesting than the Palace.

Sorry--no pics of inside the palace, as they aren't allowed. They don't even allow people to sketch.

Here's another palace on the castle grounds. It is only open to the public a couple times per year.

We went to Kyoto Station for lunch. Jip had to go back to the hotel to fetch our luggage, so we hung out in the mall at the Station. Ryleigh acted as Ambassador the whole time. I'm not sure relations are better, but the talks sure were cute.

After tonkatsu lunch (deep-fried pork and fish with rice and cabbage salad), we met our last tour guide, Yuta. He met us at Kyoto Station and then we walked to Hongwan-ji Temple.

The temple had a lot of Chinese influence...

... And a lot of Indian influence (that's an elephant carved there).

After the temple, we headed back to Kyoto Station to catch the Shinkansen back to Yokohama.

The subway ride from Yokohama back to Yokosuka was much less crowded--no near-passing out for this girl last night!

The kids were super travelers, and I'm so grateful for that! And, we all enjoyed the trip, from the experience of the bullet train to hearing the castle floor creak. Good times had by all!!