Trip to Himeji and Kyoto

We took a (very long) day trip to visit Himeji Castle and a temple in Kyoto.  We spent a total of about 8 hours on bullet trains in this one day, but it was worth it.  For those interested in doing the Tokyo-Himeji roundtrip on the bullet train, we highly recommend you purchase a JR Pass before you leave the US (you can't buy the pass in Japan).  The pass gets you on almost any JR train for a week (including all but the fastest super-express and all express trains), and it's cheaper than buying the roundtrip fare from Tokyo to Himeji on the Shinkansen.  There's a JR East Pass and JR Pass, so be careful which one you buy.

Here's my dad getting settled in on the train for the trip to Himeji.

Here are some pictures of the castle at Himeji.  It was built about 400 years ago, and it is entirely made out of wood.  There are two very large pillars supporting the central building (6 stories!), originally each a single log (later they had to replace one of them during restoration and they couldn't find a single log large enough for replacement, so they spliced two logs into one).   It's one of the only historic castles in Japan still in pristine condition because it was built just before the end of the feudal period and thus wasn't burned down (tradition dictated to burn down the loser's castle after war, and fortunately this one never had to experience a siege, and survived WWII).  The construction is very impressive, and you can really see a lot because you can walk all the way through up to the top floor inside the castle.  Also, as you can see, the leaf colors were gorgeous.

Here are my mom and Isako after using one of the ubiquitous vending machines (they're everywhere you look, not only in Tokyo, but in every city area we visited in Japan).

Here are some pictures of the Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto.  Again you can see the beautiful leaves.  And the crowds.

Finally, here's a cool scene back at Tokyo station.  You can see 3 of the different types of bullet trains.  The one on the left was pulling into the station, while the other 2 were parked.  The fronts of the bullet trains are very far-out looking.  I think that one of the major design drivers, other than obviously to minimize drag, was to deflect most of the pressure wave from the train up, rather than to the sides, to minimize the disturbance when 2 trains pass each other in opposite directions.  It's really amazing when they do pass, with a relative speed of about 300 MPH - with no warning there's suddenly a loud cracking sound and you see a blur out the windows, it takes about 4-5 seconds to pass (and keep in mind that these trains are over 1/4 mile long) and then the blur is gone.