Kyoto/Shrine/Temple

The day right after I visited Osaka, the host family I'm staying with offered to take me to Kyoto. I've heard tons of things from locals here about how Kyoto is the city to visit, so of course I couldn't turn down the offer despite being sort of tired from the previous day. So, after some more trains and subways, we went to Kyoto.
Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention - public transportation here is amazing. I can go anywhere I want, and there will always be a train, a subway, a bullet train, or a bus to take me there. It's reasonably affordable as well. I feel like if I lived here, having a car would not be necessary at all.

Anyway, back to Kyoto.

Bridge overlooking a river in Kyoto

River again

A traditional Kabuki theatre

Kyoto is unique in the sense that it preserves a lot of traditional Japanese-style architecture and culture. It can easily be seen through the different buildings, roads, and attractions here. In Kyoto, we went to a market, a shrine, and a temple.

The entrance to the market

The market was essentially a long street with shops and booths on either side

The market we went to was mostly food - and it was awesome. Almost every shop had free samples you could try, and I ended up trying a bunch of new things I've never tried before. Some things I tried include: organic honey tea, Japanese pickled cucumbers, Japanese mushrooms, plum leaf tempura, traditional Kyoto desserts (sort of like mochi with sweet filling inside), and more. It was all really, really good, and if anyone gets to chance to go to Japan, I would definitely recommend going to a food market for the samples and shopping!

Next, we visited a shrine then a temple.

Front of the shrine

Traditional styled building

Center of the shrine

Inside of the shrine

Streets of Kyoto

Streets of Kyoto - notice the traditional looking architecture

A building I saw while walking around

More pictures of Kyoto streets

Temple

Front of the temple

The view from the top of the temple

So green!

An area for visitors and prayers

Green

Greeeeeen

Both the shrine and the temple are hard to describe through words - and that's why I selected a bunch of photos to show what they looked like. Both were very traditional looking and had various things in there that were practices of Shintoism. It was a really cool experience because I have never been in a Shinto building before, and I don't know much about it honestly.
The temple was a whole area that led to the top of a little mountainside. The view from the top was beautiful - greenery everywhere! This was definitely something that I was not used to, being from Las Vegas.
It was definitely nice to be able to experience a big Japanese city that does not look as normally urbanized as the other ones - all the recommendations I've gotten to visit Kyoto were right.