Shijo Bridge over the river Kamo; it's a bike path along the river I explored on our first night.

The same path on the following morning walking into campus

Kyoto Town Hall; extraordinarily ugly but glorious compared to most buildings (with the exception of the few traditional ones). Interesting how the city is lovely and walkable and interesting while the actual buildings are crap. Urban form trumps architecture.

Fox sacred to the sun goddess...But never really trusted, so hence the cage

These are prayer items in a temple. It's easy to see now how Hello Kitty became popular...

One of many inner urban temples

A playground in the Imperial Palace Gardens (the original Imperial Palace, and still used by the Imperial Family)

Imperial Palace Gardens again..

The Imperial Camelia, which grows there in profusion...

Still in the Imperial Gardens; you can ride bikes there. This is the Season of the Red Leaves when most of Japan comes to Kyoto to look at red leaves. You see people with twenty grands worth of camera pointing them at red leaves on every street corner.

This gives a sense of the nice urban scale of most of the city, and the mountains beckoning down every street.

Banana Bread at the Aussie style cafe owned by a woman who studied in Oz, But look at the serve of butter! No wonder they are healthy.

Rice cookers. On sale in a camera shop.

My favourite from the trip, maybe.

We climbed a few hundred metres up above the touristy temples to find mountain shrines where people were actually worshipping rather than touring.