We went to Kyoto last week during Thanksgiving (unfortunately no turkey in Kyoto) with Nick's parents who were in Japan for two weeks. This year I passed on the getting made up like a geisha, but did have a chance to see many girls dressed up. Last year Nick and I went to Kyoto during the Kouyou season (which is Japanese for the turning of the leaves and it was beautiful). So, we promised that we would do the same this year! It's seemed a little colder down in Kyoto as well as the rest of Japan compared with last winter as the leaves are already starting to fall off the trees and there is good amount of snow in the mountains. While in Kyoto we ventured to the different temples and shrines, including the Golden Pavillion (which is definitely the best), Kiyomizudera, the Silver Temple (which actually isn't silver at all) and a really neat one with 1,000 Tori Gates. These gates can be seen in the pictures. There was a hike up a hill that took about 40 minutes to get up, all lined with these redish-orange gates and amazing site to see. We just missed a huge market at one of the temples when we arrived, which was too bad as they had a lot of home made crafts, foods, etc. We commented as they were packing up, that no one uses rubbermaid totes or boxes to pack their stuff up, it's still very traditional with big sheets wrapped around all their goods. There's a picture of it in the slide show. Most nights we stuffed ourselves silly with different Japanese foods. Kyoto's a really nice place and has so many sights to see. Mostly temples, shrines and castles, but we again still didn't get a chance to see all of them...there's just too many. We got to see a just married couple getting a ride around town in a rickshaw as seen in the photos. The best part of Kyoto is how it is a modern city, but they have kept the traditional old areas.