Inspired by a Lonley Planet walking tour, we headed for Asakusa. 
We stopped at a sweet shop and we don’t know exactly what we chose, but they were delicious. 
The guidebook walking tour instructions mentioned heading down an alley. 
The alley was difficult to find.
We ended up walking through several cemeteries. 
Which were serene
We spent one afternoon at the Ueno zoo.
The zoo felt a bit old fashioned. I’ve never seen elephants so close before, but their enclosure was surrounded by electric fence and felt a bit sad.
Jackass penguins were entertaining
A Thai pavillion
These monkeys were very cute.
The star of the zoo are the Panda bears. There were lineups to see them.
5 storied pagoda in Ueno park.
This police kiosk looks like it came from outer space.
Ueno Park is huge and includes several museums and brutalist architecture.
A day trip from Kyoto, we headed to the Fushimi Inari shrine and the hike up Inari mountain. There are over 10,000 orange Torii ( gates ) along the trail which takes about 2 hours to hike.
Here is the not-to-scale map. Within 15 minutes we appeared to be half-way up the mountain. Getting to the top took much longer than expected.
Along the way, there are numerous shrines where people stopped and prayed, leaving miniature torii.
The path is lined with gates and lit the entire way.
It’s also very popular, although it was much busier near the bottom.
Here is one of the shrines with a fox fountain.
The gates are a mixture of old and new.
This is the shrine at the top of the mountain.
Here we are finally at the top. It’s hard to read, but the plaque says, “Top of the mountain”
In amongst the trees, the path got dark quickly but there were lights on the entire way. The trail is open 24 hours a day and we passed people heading up, even at night.
As we came back down the mountain, we had an incredible view of Kyoto below.
This is the shrine at the bottom, as we left to get on the train and head home.
A day trip from Kyoto, the photos do not do it justice. 
We had a picnic in the park and then followed a trail down to the river.
We stumbled on a boat launch.
We took a 30 minute river boat ride pushed by a punter with a long bamboo pole.
The water was brilliant turquoise. 
This was a boat selling drinks and snacks, and it had a small habatchi on board grilling octopus for sale. 