Today was all about rain. Rain, Rain and more Rain. We left Tokyo (slightly sad, but excited for the journey ahead) via a shikansen train (fast bullet train) to Kyoto. Now the Japanese have a seating system. There are three basic types of cars -- non-reserved seats, reserved seats and Green. So when we came to the platform, we made sure not to get into a reserved section because we had not reserved seats. So we found one that said green on it. Since it didnt say reserved, we sat down. The seats were really comfortable and there was plenty space for our luggage. Little did we know, green meant deluxe (and it really was, I would have loved to sit there). After 1 stop, the conductor came to check our tickets and he said we were in the wrong car (or rather, we couldnt understand him at all and had to ask one of the passengers for help). So we schlepped all our stuff (remember, we have all our clothes and food with us) to the non-reserved cars where there were no seats. So we stood until the next stop and grabbed some seats. It turned out not to be so bad (but the green cars were much nicer!). It rained most of the train ride to Kyoto.

We landed in Kyoto about 3 hours later. It had finally stopped raining. We went to our hotel (Hotel Granvia, right in the train station) and dropped off our luggage so we could go to Himeji Castle. We took another train (about an hour) to Himeji and it started raining again!

Once in Himeji, we went to the castle. The castle is a feudal castle from the 1500s with large grounds. Unfortunately, there were no english guides, but luckily, all of the signs were in english too! What was so interesting was that the castle was not quite what I think of when I think of castles (I guess I think more along the lines of the European grandeur). Although there werent any furnishings left, the signs posted said it had been furnished in grand Japanese style. The rooms, however, didnt look that big. The most beautiful parts of the castle were the exterior and roof. Each roof tile end cap had the insignia of the ruling lords when the roof was fixed.

After that, we went back to our Hotel in Kyoto. The hotel is fantastically located (connected right to the train station), very modern but still having a lot of Japanese charm (we peeked into the restaurants and the women were wearing kimonos and sitting people down behind shoji screens. But the rest of the hotel was granite and steel. Our room is unbelievably plush (you should feel the bed and blanket!)-- the only negative is that CNN is the only english channel.