golden week

During Golden Week (a national holiday from the end of April to the beginning of May), some friends and I went to the Kansai area (Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe) for three short but very fun days. It was hard to choose just a few pictures from all the ones I took to post on here. They're all out of order and really poorly laid out, but I have taken way longer than intended trying to make them look acceptable so now I'm going to post them with the knowledge that they're not. Also, I didn't really take many good pictures in Osaka since we weren't there for very long so all of these pictures are from Kyoto and Kobe.

The picture above is きんかくじ Kinkakuji, The Golden Temple in Kyoto.

To the left is Nao and me in Kobe's China Town.

Below/to the left is Shaun, Mike and me on a boat ride around the harbor in Kobe.

Somehow, this is one of the only pictures I took in Osaka. It is not so impressive. The city was really brightly lit and really crowded.

Kyoto is famous for Matcha (Green Tea). We tried green tea and a Japanese dessert at The Golden Temple. おいしかたですね。We also ate lots of other Matcha desserts. We ate big Matcha parfaits at a parfait shop in Gion. Mmm.

This is Fushimi Inari in Kyoto. 伏見稲荷 <--This may or may not be correct. It is more likely incorrect. There are long "tori" archways up the mountain so we took a little hike and saw lots of these and temples/shrines along the way up.

My former Manager, Yuriko, and her friend were also in Kyoto the same time we were so we met them for dinner in Gion. We ate at a small restaurant at a really small shelf-like table against the wall. It was interesting and of course delicious. 

This picture and the next two are of a really pretty river in Kyoto. I forget the name, but we stopped there and ate at a tiny restaurant along the river. The tempura was really good, and the view was awesome. 

These are my friends: Shaun, Mike, and Nao. They were good travel buddies.

Kyoto

Kobe - There was a big earthquake there about ten? years ago that did a great deal of damage, but the it's a really beautiful place now. We went on a boat ride and a ropeway ride up a mountain, where we saw a pretty garden and greenhouse. We also tried Kobe beef, which I'm sure I would have been extremely impressed by if I was a big steak fan. :D It was good.