I like fall in the US much better than in Japan. For one, I'm actually warm more often cause my house is not insulated with cardboard. Also, I think it's prettier because we have a larger variety of fall colors (most of Kyoto's leaves were red). Finally, I love walking through fallen leaves. In Kyoto, they cut the leaves off the trees before ( Read more... )

So, this weekend was very different from my normal ones. First of all, I had three days off, which was totally awesome after two weekends in a row of speech contests on Saturday. Second of all, we had to shy away from all major sites cause of the maple leaf insanity. We originally intended to see Nanzen-in, but we decided against paying to go ( Read more... )

On Sunday, at one of my English teacher's suggestion, we went to see Tofukuji. Tofukuji is a Buddhist temple in Higashiyama-ku (the south west) in Kyoto city. It is part of the Rizai sect of Zen Buddhism and was established in 1236 AD. It has the oldest Zen main gate in Japan, the Sanmon ( Read more... )