This is the most splendid Japanese temple i have seen. It's called Kinkakuji, or 'Golden Pavilion'. It's calming to look at it and see the reflection in the pond, and the trees. It appears to be hovering. 
On the way to Kyoto, we saw snow! Kyoto is in central Japan, but it's surrounded by mountains, so the elevation allows for periodical snowfall. It was nice to see it from the train window. Actually, at Kinkakuji, it was snowing lightly and the sun was shining at the same time. 
We were invited to our friends' place (Greg and Maki), and they have a Nintendo Wii, so we played for a while. It was hilarious, but i'm terrible at video games. No matter how fast i shook those controllers, i couldn't win the 100m dash. 
This is the cake we ate on Christmas day with Greg and Maki. 
We couldn't help but covet this little bus. It's just sooooo kyoot! It's the new VW bus, and it's quite a bit smaller than the original ones. Christmas was very different than usual for us, but it was a treat to have some family around to hang out with and to open some gifts with. We didn't have turkey, or even KFC, but we did make sushi for Christmas dinner. Sometimes you just have to say, "when in Rome."
