The Dotonbori district of Osaka at night. A lot of young people hang out here. It is full of karaoke bars, pachinko parlors, food stands and restaurants. Our group was having so much fun here that we stayed too late and missed the last bullet train of the night back to our hotel in Kyoto.

Pachinko parlor in Dotonbori district of Osaka

Most of the restaurants in Japan display their menu in the window with carefully crafted replicas of the available dishes. This is very useful if you don't speak Japanese as you can bring the waiter/waitress outside and just point to what you want. At some food stands you use a ticket machine with buttons corresponding to certain dishes and hand the ticket to the cook. Tipping is not expected and may even be refused. This was a window display in Osaka. In Tokyo there are about 80,000 restaurants.

Kyoto Train Station
Some of the major stations are truly massive. Kyoto Station has large, soaring open-air spaces with glass surfaces that I really liked. The stations are like mini-cities inside. The station in Osaka has a very large shopping mall built underneath the tracks.

Kimono-clad ladies seen in Kyoto Train Station.

Kyoto was the old imperial capital of Japan and has a charming mixture of the ancient and the modern.

Camera-shy maiko dancers in the Gion section of Kyoto. Maiko are apprentice geisha who perform at private functions held at some of the finer restaurants in Gion. You have to be very quick with your camera because their appearance is fleeting and they don't stop to pose for photographs. My wife got these shots and made friends with some Japanese paparazzi waiting outside to take photos.