Kyoto [Part V - Rain, Rain and more Rain...]

Our Ryokan [旅館] Landlady had warned us on Sunday that it would rain today, but since every thing had been shut yesterday, and Greg had taken this Monday off as holiday we thought we'd at least try and go see some stuff... So, as soon as the Imperial Palace office opened at 8:45, we gave them a call and asked if they still had spare places on their tour of the gardens in the Imperial Palace grounds...They advised us to come as soon as possible to make a reservation in person. For some unknown reason, it is much easier for foreigners to get reservations on the tours of Imperial Palace gardens and villas than Japanese citizens. We got there about an hour later to book for four people. We then went in search of luggage lockers in the nearest station, to get rid of our big bag, and then waited in the rain under a tree trying to get as unwet as possible. I wasn't very successful.

When we finally got into the grounds, the introductory video was in Japanese with English subtitles. Unfortunately, despite being earlier than the allotted time, we missed most of it. The tour itself was also in Japanese, which I generally ignored and made up any missing information for my own amusement. It was still a nice garden (apart from the weird flat round pebble beach which I just didn't see the attraction of...) but the rain made it a little less enjoyable...

We then battled to get on a bus and headed to Ginkakuji [銀閣寺] the Golden Palace, where intrepid tourists were forsaking their umbrellas just to have photos with the palace in the background... This involved careful timing to coordinate the photo taking and removal of Golden-Palace-obscuring-umbrellas from view.

We then decided it best to take refuge in the nearest cafe until we had dried a bit.

Not long after, Greg and I gave up on the idea of more sightseeing in the rain and went to a try a Pachinko Parlour for a while instead, where we managed to find a French couple doing the same thing. After a very confusing 10 minutes we had lost our (well... Gregs) 1000yen 'investment'. And I still don't really know what the turny knob controls...