Wednesday in Kyoto

This morning we took the Shinkansen (the bullet train) to Kyoto. Awesome ride. It's very impressive and makes Amtrak really look like crap (sorry D!)
We unfortunately didn't see Mount Fuji because it was overcast today.

Hikari:


Nozomi:



Our first stop was the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji) - very photogenic:



Next was Ryoan-ji (Rock Garden)- smaller than I expected but very zen:




After lunch in Gion, we went to Kiyomizu-dera temple - beautiful and worth the uphill climb:







We lucked out on our way back down from the temple because we saw another pair of geishas. It's apparently a rare sighting. There are only 1,000 geishas in Tokyo and 500 in Kyoto and we saw 2 in each city. And this time I took pictures!




And we got back on the Shinkansen to come back to Tokyo.
We took the Hikari:


But the coolest looking is the Nozomi: