Kyoto Imperial Palace

If we lucked out with Himeji, then we REALLY lucked out with our Imperial Palace visit. Usually in order to go into the Palace grounds you need to sign up for a private tour. There is a waiting list and the wait time in a couple of months. LUCKILY, they had a special event which had the Palace open between Wednesday and Sunday of last week. We went yesterday, Sunday. The Palace building itself wasn't that special, but the Emperor's gardens, and the decorated walls inside of the buildings were beyond anything I've seen before. I took pictures of the three main entrances, the one for foreign dignitaries, one for commoners (which is the one we had to go through) and the one for the Emperor. We couldn't actually go inside, but the doors were all open so we could look inside. The walls were covered with sumi paintings. GORGEOUS sumi paintings. I took pictures of some, but they don't do them justice. The thing I found the best here however were the Emperor's personal gardens in the back of the palace. I totally want my backyard to look like that. It was inspiring. We shopped around a little after. There were a good number of people but it wasn't too bad because the grounds are very large.