Greetings from Japan, where sitting down onto a pre-warmed toilet seat gives one comfort, not discomfort.
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The weekend of July 1, we went to Kyoto. The American equivalent of Kyoto is maybe Washington DC, where there are historical points of interest throughout the city. Kyoto used to be the capitol of Japan, but now it's mostly a tourism and university town. There are more temples and shrines than you can see in a weekend, so we'll probably go back.

We stayed in a Ryokan, or traditional Japanese traveler's inn. Most are family run and the family lives on site as well. Ours was lower scale, as they can get quite fancy. We slept on futons on the tatami floors, and took nice hot baths in the shared tub. It was great.

Some photos.






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Going to so many temples and shrines, I must have caught some of the Buddhist mindset of giving no value to physical goods. In a fit of Zen, I passed the camera off to the kids to do most of the documenting of our trip. And they did just fine.

The results are below, narrated by the artists.

Veronica's first.



And now Zane's