Today's pictures.

Today we slept in and took some time to test-pack our things to make sure it'll be possible when it comes time to fly back to the States. It looks like it'll work. :)

In the afternoon and evening we walked around Ponto-chō, Gion, and Shinbashi. Along Kiyamachi-dōri the police were cracking down on illegally-parked scooters. We visited Yasaka-jinja, a seventeenth-century Shintō shrine that's said to guard Gion. It's a really pretty place to visit at night. The only geisha-type either of us saw was a maiko whom thedreadpilot spotted in the back of a taxicab. Maybe the taxi was just for convenience's sake, but I imagine it also saves them from hoards of tourists surrounding them on the street.

Next, green tea treats at a place called 都路里 (Saryo Tsujiri), where thedreadpilot had an 宇治フロート (Uji Float)—green tea ice cream floating in iced matcha—and I had an お茶の花束 (Ocha no Hanataba, "tea bouquet")—one scoop each of matcha-, genmaicha-, and bancha-flavored ice cream, topped with little matcha cookies.

We walked back to our hotel along the Teramachi covered shopping arcade, where we stopped in an actual arcade to play some drumming and car racing games and see some nifty ones the likes of which we've never seen back home. Perhaps the most impressive was a multiplayer medieval fantasy roleplaying videogame that seems to use cards (maybe RFID-embedded?) as the player interface. Each player lays down and moves cards on his playing surface and watches his own viewpoint on a monitor, while a larger monitor (out of sight of the players) shows the overall action to observers. Cool.