On Friday we woke up to snow. Yes snow :) It made Kyoto look very picturesque. As we walked out of the train station, it started coming down hard and sticking. It was the good, pure, white snow that makes you want to sit in front of a roaring fire drinking hot chocolate.

So we went on our bus bound for Sanjusangendo. Its a Buddhist shrine where they have 1001 statues surrounding a huge Buddha. Unfortunately, you couldn't take any pictures, so all of ours are slightly blurry (stolen pictures without flash!) but they were unbelievable to see. They are so intricate and beautiful, made of wood and then lacquered and covered in gold. There were many statues in front also who were other protectors (but I don't remember their full stories), some with scary faces. It was just unbelievable to see them all standing there as people prayed. There was a monk who started the morning prayers when we were there, with someone accompanying him on the drums. They burn these sticks that are sold - for about 600 yen you can write your name and wish to Buddha and then they burn it for you and it supposed to come true.

After that, we went back outside and it was snowing. Full swirling buckets of snow coming down all around us. The beauty of the white snow on all the old shrine structures was amazing. It makes me miss the old days of being a child and watching the snow fall out of the den window in my house and then going outside to ruin its perfection.

Anyway, then we left for the train station. I had been warned that trains would be really packed because its a holiday weekend, and then we tried getting reserved tickets and they were sold out for non-smoking. So we ran to the train to try to get seats and when we got on the non-reserved section, it was practically empty! So that was really nice. We were able to get seats right near our luggage. On our way, we had great views of the Japanese countryside covered in snow, as well as another clear shot of Mount Fuji.

When we arrived in Tokyo, we went to the Chabad House, dropped off our stuff before a quick errand to get transformers. We found Joey some exciting stuff!

We had another great shabbos at Chabad (I highly recommend staying with them for shabbos if you come to Japan) and it was nice to have non-instant stuff to eat! We will actually be staying at the Chabad House until we leave.

We leave Japan in about 26 hours. How sad. That's all for now.