Now for the rest of the Kyoto Story. We decided just a week before Golden Week to go to Kyoto, which was bad news for anyone trying to find a hotel in either Kyoto or Osaka. If you can believe it, both Kyoto (pop. 3 million or so) and Osaka (pop. 6 million) had no hotel vacancies for May 3rd and 4th. Not to say that there were no vacancies (just none under 600$ per night). According to every search engine we looked on, there was not a single double occupancy hotel room in either city that was in anyone normals price range. We were about to give up when a last minute desperation phone call to the kyoto tourism information center pointed us in the direction of a search engine that produced five vacant dormatory turned hostels that were available for 2500 yen per night (about 20$). The pictures were less than inviting, but the old woman on the phone sounded kind, and we didn't have alot of other options, so we signed up. We were all ready to go when I got an email from Brandon Caruthers, a mission buddy who currently lives in Osaka with his Japanese wife, saying we could stay with them, so as much fun as the no toilet no shower hostel sounded, we opted to stay with the Caruthers. This picture is from Kinkakuji, and despite the peaceful setting, there were really several hundred people there for the view along with us.