The Kyoto trip was a pretty big shift from what we had been doing in Nagoya. It was really interesting seeing how different the more tourist-centric were compared to where we had been living.

I thought it was really cool how many mountains we could see out of the Shinkansen window. The towns we passed through all felt very peaceful compared to the big cities. I’d like to come back to Hikone and meet Hikonyan in the flesh someday.

Another highlight of this trip was our side trip into Nara on the last day. The deer and the temple we visited there were amazing (in very different ways).