Its getting to be that time of year........eh?

There are definitley things that we miss being overseas, especially the holidays. This weekend is also one of those times that I miss.
Want to wish all the people heading to the woods, a safe and successful opening deer hunting weekend. Make sure to share those stories.

Kyoto

The place we are living at this year is Kyoto Japan. Kyoto is a city in the prefecture (state) of Kyoto. The population is about 1.5 million people.
For many years Kyoto was the capital of Japan before it switched to Tokyo in 1869. Because of this there are a lot of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines (Shintoism being one of the major religions here in Japan. You can learn more about Shintoism here at Wikipedia) There are 2000 temples and shrines - 1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines in Kyoto. There is probably someone that can say they have visited all of them but I just dont think we are going to be able to put a check mark next to that one and say we have done it. I don't even know where you would start. Maybe get a really fast car and try to drive past the entrance of all of them and snap a quick picture? I let you try that one - just let me know how it goes
 
One of the major industries in Kyoto is tourism. As you can imagine with that many temples and shrines and a lot of history, there is a lot to see. From where we lived last year to where we live this year we see many more foreign people and many more people with cameras around their neck. We have had the chance to go to one of the famous temples a couple weeks ago (Kiyomizu-dera) and hope to get to a couple more on our next day off. This time of year is very popular for tourism in Kyoto as the leaves are turning colors and many people make trips here to the see the temples and shrines as the leaves change colors.
We saw a magazine this summer that was 100 places to see beofre you die - I think it was from Time magazine and Kyoto was on the list.
Kyoto is also the headquarters of Nintendo, who is currently building a new headquarters building not too far from where we live. I keep asking if there will be a cool visitors center that we can go take a tour of or go see, but everyone seems to think they wont have anything like that. Bummer.
So far we like Kyoto and what we have been able to see and look forward to finding out more about this ancient city.
In 1997 it hosted a conference about green house gas emissions that was aptly named the Kyoto Protocol