Just a little foreign: Kyoto

If you ever travel to Japan, I would recommend not leaving the country until you have spent at least a couple days in Kyoto. Actually, if I could only got to one city, I am pretty sure this would be it. There is so much history here, and you can get a pretty good taste of the whole temple and traditional Japan scene from this town.

I have no idea how many temples are here, but my best guess would be somewhere in the....just looked it up and my guess would have been way off....there are more than 1600 temples, and the city's name is "City of a Thousand Temples." With that being said, the temples can get a bit monotonous, as they are all of very similar design. The Golden Palace, Japan's most famous palace/temple is also here, and is more than worth the 500 yen to see.

On Day One in Kyoto, we headed to the eastern part of the city and did a large section of the "Philosophers Walk." There is a huge string of some of the larger temples to see in Kyoto along this walk. Without exaggerating we walked about 25k that day, which brings to question why I haven't bough a legit camera backpack yet.

Kyoto has a very traditional feel to it, and there are several parts that still seem to be many years behind the times.

I have noticed that like their human counterparts, Asian spiders work all the time to create some of the most ambitious webs I have ever seen. They also look kind of like huge, eight-legged wasps.

Kyoto is know for its Gion district, which looks very traditional and is still home to the dying breed of entertainers known as the Geisha. I was lucky enough to see two of them, although I am not entirely sure how often they can be found. I know that they are usually seen in the afternoon coming to and from appointments, but as I am not that lucky to begin with, it seems as if though maybe these are Geisha hired by the town of Kyoto of something of the like so that tourists can see them. There is the slim possibility, however, that I was just really lucky that day.

On one of our "Benjamin Map Excursions" I found this huge graveyard perched on a hill. People were carrying these blue buckets up to their ancestors graves, but I have no idea why.

Geisha number two, I had to run her down in an alley and do a series of hand gestures to get her to let me take her picture.

This area of Kyoto is really cool looking, and if you want to buy traditional Japanese stuff as souvenirs, this is the place to do it.

This temple is called the Kiyomizu-dera, and is a national treasure. It was originally made in 798 and reconstructed in 1633. Both times not a single nail was used.

The pre-made lunches at convenience stores in Japan are surprisingly delicious, they are also about the only way to get a decent lunch that costs less than $15.

We sneaked into this temple just as they were closing the gates for the day, but as we left we realized they had actually seen us and were waiting for us to leave before they locked everyone out.

Beer vending machines are a great idea.

This is one of the hostels we were lucky enough to stay in, we were here for two nights and in Kyoto for a total of three.

I got a little bored sitting on the roof, so I made this.

Kyoto's famous Golden Palace, I wish it were either the winter or autumn when I took this picture.

"Monkey Mountain" was one of the coolest things we did. There are around 200 wild monkeys that live in this area, and you hike to the top of the mountain and can interact with them, although they will rob you if you aren't careful.

I thought this monkey was going to kill me. I was seeing how close I could get with my camera when suddenly he raised his eyebrows, as you can see in this picture, then yelled at me and bared his fangs at me. That would have been the next frame, but I was running for my life at the moment. I have never seen Joanna move that fast, either, but the time I had turned around and started running, she had already ran halfway up the rest of the mountain.

Once you get to the top, you can go into this little hut where they sell peanuts and apples that you can feed the monkeys, only from within the cage, because they get pretty damn aggressive.