The next morning we visited Nijo castle

Nijo castle is a flatland castle, so it's mostly walls and a couple of low buildings. 

The gate on the inner walls.

This is about as tall as the inner buildings get.

There is a nice garden inside, albeit very small.

And this rest house where feudal lords held sake tastings for tourists as early as 1608

the moat

steps up to the top of the wall

the view down from same

Afterwards we went to visit the tranquil bamboo forest of Arashiyama

well it would have been tranquil if not for all the people

No seriously, it was the weekend and every man in Kyoto and his shiba inu were there.

Towards the evening I took Mel to see where I had spent the month working from Kyoto

We walked along the canal

It was nice, but it's better in spring

We popped in to visit Asaki at Story coffee

We also attended a meeting of the language group and introduced them to the wonders of Tim Tams and Vegemite.