Note: This is meant to be a picture post. But I failed to do a systems check on my blog before heading out, so I don't have the ability to upload photos. Consequently, the picture part of this picture post will have to wait until I get back.
UPDATE: Photos uploaded.
My 28 hour journey from NYC to Kyoto was made pleasurable by enjoying the superiority of Japanese transit. This began with Japan airlines.
The stewardesses on Japan airlines spoke in such a soft gentle manner that it was nice to hear any announcement they had to make. The main course meal they served was notbad for airplane food, certainly better than anything I have ever had on a US airline. They also had red wine bottles as a standard free drink, which the passenger sitting next to me took full advantage of.
After about thirteen hours of flying, we arrived in Tokyo Narita airport. We took a local train to another station to get on the famous bullet train.
While waiting for the local train I noticed that different trains arriving on our track were coming/going from different directions. While on the train, they announced that after a certain station cars 1-p would split off into one direction and p+1-n would go in another. A nice feature of the disassembling, multi-direction-track train was little lockers for your luggage. 
They announced that should you forget your combo, you would need to ride the train all the way to the terminal station to get your bag.
The bullet train station had floor diagrams of how to stand in line for the arriving trains.
What's the point of making a train hit 300km/h if it loses time to dorks shuffling into the cars at every station?
Our white privilege was checked by Kyoto's dangerously low entryway height. We have a running counter of how many times we have each banged our forehead on some doorway our trip. My counter is already at 4.
In Kyoto, there are vending machines everywhere.
The first site seeing we did was the Kiyomizu Temple.
We did this tour through "the womb" where you are taken through a completely pitch-black tunnel, guided by holding a handrail. The spiritual experience was ruined by a child screaming ahead of us.
Off the beaten path near the temple was a large graveyard.
"Not bad for a canned coffee from a vending machine in a graveyard"
Oh hey it's my neighbor Totoro
Next up was a World War II memorial.
Throughout everywhere they have flowing water with ladles you use to pour the water on your hands as some sort of spiritual cleanse.
Appalling littering on shrines or liquid donations to the dead?
Money is thrown into all sorts of things for good luck.
Now this is what I call a flower.
We went to some street market after temple seeing. Have you tried Melonpan?
The next day we went to a bamboo forest.
Not pictured: around here they have carriages for couples - but instead of being pulled by horses they are pulled by young, fit Japanese men.
Next up, the Tenry-ji Temple and garden.
The gravel in front of this pond is raked in neat lines. A tourist stepped over the fence and a police officer came running to throw them out, and called in the incident so that the gravel would be reraked.
After walking about in the heat we decided to check out an Onsen, a Japanese bathhouse. These are nude-required and tattooed-person-banned "hot springs." The land of 100 dicks had a bunch of different stations: a normal shower, jacuzzis with massage jets, muddy "hot spring' water, a freezing cold pool "the shrinker', a sauna, and a massage room. I paid thirty bucks extra to get the massage. But instead of the borderline sexual experience I was hoping for, I was scrubbed down furiously by an older Korean woman. I can't say I felt particularly relaxed afterwards, but I did feel clean.
That night we went to a bar where the bartenders are incentivized to make the cocktails nice.
Our last day in Kyoto was spent at the orange gates. They did an exhibit of this once in Central Park in NYC when I was younger.
But first, conveyer belt sushi. The way this works is that each different colored plate has a different price. When you're done eating they tally up all the plates you have to pay.
We also stumbled upon a University campus on our way to the orange gates.
It's a decent hike up, as you get closer to the top there are more opportunities for pics without hundreds of people in the gates.
And that wraps it up for Kyoto, next up Seoul, Korea.
Bwahaha @ $30 well spent!