Victoria and I went to Kyoto this weekend with Mike and Kelley. It was really packed, because it is cherry blossom viewing season. This year the season came a little early, so we actually got the tail end of the season. Still, I was surprised at how many of the trees still had flowers. By comparison, in Toyama there are hardly any trees with flowers still, despite the fact that Toyama started blooming a week later than Kyoto.

We tried several hotels two weeks before our trip, but they were all totally booked. Eventually, I gave up and booked us rooms in Shin-Osaka, a 25 minute train ride away. Even Osaka was fairly full, and we barely got reservations at the hotel there. Once we arrived at Shin-Osaka we were all hungry, despite eating on the train, so we found a nearby ramen restaurant.

Saturday morning we took a train to Kyoto and we wandered around the streets for a long time. There were just an incredible number of people whereever we went. Every restaurant we went to seemed full, and the temples we visited were full of people. We visited the downtown area and the Gion area primarily. Then we went to Kiyomizudera at the end of the day, which was nice. I always like going to Kiyomizudera. This was my third time there. From 6:30-9:30 there was supposed to be a special light display of the cherry blossoms at the temple, but we didn't go back to see it. Most of the trees there had already lost their petals, so I don't think we missed much.

One of our pasttimes in Kyoto was sitting by rivers and creeks and watching the sakura petals float down the river. The rivers all look really nice with the cherry blossoms in them. I guess that's one advantage of going at the end of the season.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel, which was in a bit of a deserted area of town. It was a little creepy, actually, because no one was around on a Saturday night.

On Sunday we went back to Kyoto and dumped our stuff in a locker. We had a hard time finding an empty locker, despite there being hundreds of lockers at the station. That's how crowded it was in Kyoto. There were also 50 meter lines to get onto buses at the station.

First we went to the Kyoto Handicraft Center, and Victoria and I bought yukattas (summer kimonos) there. Kelley bought a decent amount of things at different craft stores, so we joked that she was buying up Kyoto.

We found a little cafe near the handicraft center, and it had amazing milkshakes and pretty good food, too. After lunch we split up. Kelley and Mike went to the nearby Philsopher's Walk, while Victoria and I headed to Arashiyama. I hadn't gone to Arashiyama before, so I wanted to visit there. Victoria and I went on the Philosopher's Walk during our first trip to Kyoto, so I wasn't as interested in going back.

We wandered around for awhile, but it was very crowded on the sidewalks. We found a place in a park to have ice cream, which was nice. Then we walked along a lake for awhile, and up through a park. Eventually we came to a bamboo forest path which led back towards the train station. The bamboo was really pretty.

We took a train back to the station and then tried to get Subway sandwiches at the station. When my family was visiting, there was a Subway up on the 10th floor of the station building. Unfortunately, they had renovated the area on the 10th floor and got rid of the Subway. However, I remembered that there was also one down in the basement shopping area. We bought sandwiches to take with us on the train.

For some reason, the train was really long. Normally the thunderbird trains to Toyama are 10 cars long, but this one was 12 cars long. Perhaps it was because of the sakura season. Nothing very eventful happened on the train ride.