I just returned from a weekend trip to Kyoto with Chika. It was awesome!. Kyoto is the ancient capital of Japan and has many fine temples and classical japanese buildings. We visited a number of special Bhuddist temples. Many of them established many many centuries ago! There were beautiful mossy forests of japanese maples and carefully sculpted trees that look really cool. We saw a huge lake filled with lotus blossoms. We visited the Zen rock garden temple I had seen photos of in New Zealand. Mossy rocks in the middle of carefully raked white stones. It was cool. The Golden Temple was amazing. The second and third floors are covered in real pure gold foil! It was a good experience. I should mention the train station was incredible. A huge modern building with shopping mall included. It makes Te Papa in Wellington look like a dolls house! They even have special employees whose job is is to keep the escalator hand rails clean! We had lunch on the 11th floor I think. It was delicious. It takes about 2 hours from Himeji to Kyoto by train. Chika bought special discount tickets. I even found 5000 yen! that's about 80 dollars NZ. I'm quite lucky I think.