Stephen: On our second and final full day in Kyoto, we headed out to the outskirts of the city, to a place called Arashiyama. Kyoto was the first place on the whole trip where we had become acutely aware of the fact that we are foreigners, feeling more like sightseers than anything else, which wasn’t all that pleasant an experience. That was heighten a bit by Arashiyama, which is full of interesting sights, but also a ton of tourists.

That said, it turned out to be a great day. We kicked things off in some UNESCO World Heritage shrine garden, which was cool, but full of people, and as Grace put it, it really made us appreciate stumbling upon the deserted, albeit smaller, shrine the day before. It wasn’t the best of starts, but luckily the garden opened up onto a bamboo grove, where the ‘trees’ reach into the sky…