Japan Day 7- The Bullet Train to Kyoto, Temple of the Golden Pavilion and RAMEN!!!

This morning we left for Kyoto on the bullet train! What an experience!! They go really fast!! (150 miles per hour.) We FINALLY saw Mt. Fuji! She's beautiful!!  When we arrived we went to an Edward Jones Italian lunch that was really good! It was at a restaurant (The Higashiyama) that was set way back in a Japanese garden and was so beautiful!! I just LOVE all the beautiful Japanese gardens here!  After lunch we visited the beautiful Temple of the Golden Pavilion. It had beautiful gold leaf all over it!!! (If we were in the States, that would be GONE!) There were many beautiful gardens and shrines as well. We saw the oldest Bonsai tree in Japan (or so the guide said) and got to sit on the rock where the first Shogun sat!  It's actually shaped like a chair... I can see why he liked it!  Got to our hotel that evening and got settled and then Bill and I went out for some Ramen noodles... which were SO good and nothing like our ramen... which is yucky! It was quite the experience ordering though... you have to order it at the kiosk at the front and then they take you back inside where you sit at a booth (not a table) and they lift a curtain to give you your food.  It took us a moment before we could figure out how their system worked and the employees had a hard time trying to communicate how to do it. They didn't speak very much English, although enough to really confuse us!  Then we made the mistake of eating ALL our broth so when it came time for a refill they wouldn't give it to us... we had to have our broth for some reason!  Becky told us that the Japanese don't deviate... if the menu says something, you cannot change it or modify it or ask for more of something or something on the side... they DON'T deviate...so it was useless to plead that we couldn't understand the Japanese on the menu explaining this!  (I think refills were free so too bad for us because this Ramen was AMAZING!)  Instead of ordering a whole new bowl of Ramen we decided to get a boba drink on the walk back to the hotel. It wasn’t as good as the ones in Tokyo with Rasmussens, but it filled in the gap of a lighter dinner.  We walked around a covered Mall area and just took in all the sights--it was a busy Friday night and people were out enjoying the evening.  Kyoto is a city of only (ONLY!!) 1 million so quite "smaller" than Tokyo but it still seemed to be just as bustling with people.  Kyoto is known for being a very historical area and more traditional than Tokyo, or other cities.  They have limits of how high they can build so we could see the pretty green mountains on all sides of us except for the south... no mountains to the south.  Because of this we always knew where we were directionally.  Kyoto is located in a beautiful valley!  It's colder here though, as we are higher in altitude!  I was already cold...