Awoken at 6am by a couple of young girls wrestling in their bed, the day began. I went down to the foyer and got some bus maps, and with that we were on our way. A whole day bus trip around Kyoto is 500 yen ($5) for an adult, which is good value considering individual trips are 220 yen. the girls aren't classed as human beings until they are 6 in japan, so they were free. We walked up to Nijo castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nijo_Cast le), which is about 10 minutes walk from the hotel. This is apparently an ancient shogun fortress, surrounded by a moat and unscalable walls, and complete with squeeky floorboards in all of the halls which act as an early warning system against intruders. And from the outside, and in the grounds surrounding the actual castle it is very impressive. In the 30 something degree heat and humidity Charlotte sprinted around like a crazy person chasing the thousands of dragon flies. Ive never seen more dragon flies in one place. But unfortunately the inside of the castle wasn't quite as interesting as the dragon flies on the outside. Many guidebooks rate this castle as a must-see, but neither Veronica or myself were impressed. Perhaps it just wasnt our kind of ancient structure!?!? Apparently no cameras are allowed inside, but initially i didn't know this, and made the little angry Japanese woman at the entrance quite upset with me when i started snapping pictures at the entrance. Then i didn't remove my shoes quick enough and she got angry again. I suppressed the urge to throw a shoe at her and then take a photo of it just to upset her, and i complied with her incomprehensible instructions and took my shoes off and holstered the camera. We entered the castle and wandered around in a giant loop looking at many different rooms which all looked exactly alike. The huge scale of the building, and the craftsmanship and detail in the castle was exquisite, and to think all of this was built centuries ago by hand is amazing, but none of that prevented me from being bored stupid. We trekked from one boring hallway to the next, and i began to wonder if we would ever get out. In brief chats with other tourists, it would seem we weren't alone in our opinion either, but eventually we made it out, and for one final time i angered my entrance policing friend by putting my shoes back on while still standing on ye olde ancient sacred tatami matt. I'll give her one thing though, hundreds of people around and she doesn't miss a thing. So then we got our first bus of the trip..surprisingly easy, because the map was a nightmare to decypher initially. But once on the bus, which was spotless and had sub zero air conditioning blasting, we were safely on our way to Kinkakuji (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkakuji ). Arriving at Kinkakuji we sidestepped our way through the crowds to some stalls on the walk up to the entrance, and as we were low on drinks we decided to stop. Behind the counter at the stall the women were waving like crazy people at us, and it was then we realised that they were waving at Angela. This was to become a trend for today. With the humidity, Angela's hair is purely ringlets, and the Japanese could not get enough of it. I had to take the poor girl up to the counter for the staff to fuss over her and say cute stuff in Japanese to her. She did pretty much the same thing i did and just smiled and nodded. "Mix" ice cream at all other shops in Japan has so far been chocolate and vanilla, so i ordered 2 vanilla and 2 mix ice creams. To my surprise the "mix" cones were a swirl of white and green, which was a little weird. Turns out i got a mixture of vanilla and green tea flavoured ice cream. Funny thing was, maybe somewhat because of the heat, it was the nicest ice cream ive had in a very long time. Apparently i like green-tea ice cream. Ice creams down, we bought more bottles of water and pocari sweat and continued onto the entrance. Kinkakuji really is as beautiful as they say. We've all seen pictures of it, so i wont go into too much detail about it, but im very happy we braved the crowdes to see it (although for one of the main tourist attractions in japan, and on a sunday it wasnt that crowded. i was expecting a lot worse). Once again Angela was a celebrity. Standing in front of a centuries old gold leaf clad pavilion, a group of about 20 people grouped together and took turns having their photo, and photos of their children taken with Angela. I had to ask Veronica whether they realised that there was a golden pavilion just behind them. Once we got our daughter back we continued on and up the hill begind the pavilion. Every few minutes someone would stop and take a picture of Angela, some sneakily when they thought we werent looking, until Angela turned to them and yelled CHEESE!!!. We got to the top of the hill to the ancient caretakers quarters, Angela was tired so she curled up on a rock under a small wooden awning, and again the cameras came out. So tired and hot, but satisfied we left Kinkakuji. If you only see one gold plated temple in your lifetime, make sure it is this one. It really was spectacular. Again we hopped on another pleasantly freezing bus to head to Kinkakuji's poorer cousin, Ginkakuji (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkakuji ). Once we got there, it was around midday and it was stupidly hot and humid. More ice creams and drinks for the girls, before trekking up a frustratingly crowded hill full of market vendors who's sole purpose for being was to price gouge the tourists. Determined not to be ripped off, we powered past their attempts to step out and sell stuff, and entered the grounds of Ginkakuji. After we trekked through a couple of unremarkable zen sand gardens, we were confronted with what had to be the most expensive and impressive tower of scaffolding and heishan cloth i have ever seen. Under that, somewhere, was Ginkakuji. My feeling of superiority at avoiding being ripped off faded quickly. With no idea why the stupid pavilion was covered in stupid scafolding, we decided to hike up the hill behind the stupid pavilion, as many guide books have stated that it is a superb view of Kyoto. Those many guide books are wrong. It was a short hike up a steep hill to see very little. Hot, tired and a supremely annoyed we left scaffoldkakuji to try and find a bus to get home. While waiting an eternity for a bus, we had a friendly old taxi driver come over to us, for what Veronica informs me was just an excuse to practice his English while he waited for a passenger. But he told us that apparently scaffoldkakuji is being "remoddeled" at some stupid cost, which happens every 2 or 3 years. At least it was this one and not Kinkakuji. Then i would have been upset. So, hot and absolutely drained we returned to the hotel. Later on that evening after naps we again went to our little 24hr food via vending machine restaurant, and this time ordered like pro's. Once again the food appeared only minutes after ordering, and proved the quality of the first visit wasn't a fluke. It was excellent. 4 meals for $18 with as much rice and water as you want is pretty reasonable. We returned to the hotel after a short walk. We stayed in for the afternoon and watched simpsons episodes on the eeepc. Later on that night we were hungry and too hot to sleep, so we hit the 7/11 directly across the road. More pocari sweat in a 1L bottle and a couple of other drinks, some typically Japanese pastries which are fantastic (one a giant banana shaped bananabread loaf covered in chocolate), some sandwiches, one a toasted (but cold and packaged) BLT, and one a ham and cucumber with wasabi mayonaise, all for $12. Who says Japan is expensive? That brings us up to this point. tomorrow we should be going to check out the Imperial Castle, Kiyomisudera and possibly the Heian shrine, before going to check out a shopping mall i stumbled across the other day. It was basically an entire street, with a roof over it, which continued as far as the eye could see, and was lined each side with shops and market style vendors. I almost walked straight past it, and only discovered it by chance. I attempted to walk down it, but gave up about 10 minutes into the trip and had to turn back. Im determined to explore it all tomorrow, which will be our last day in Kyoto until the end of the trip, when hopefully we will have a few more days here.