Started the next day at the grand in name only Imperial Palace. Perhaps tricked by the name, this is the only place in Kyoto where we actually saw foreign tour groups. It's perfectly pleasant, but pretty undistinguished, substantially less grand than Marie Antoinette's fake shepherd's cottages in back of Versailles. As you can see at right, it looks a bit like a benihana's. Part of the problem is, like most historical places in Japan, the combination of timber buildings, gas lamps and earthquakes and civil wars causes most buildings to get wiped out all the time. The imperial palace burned down fourteen times in the 12th century, for example. It kept burning and being rebuilt, most recently in 1788, then again fifty years later, so this "palace" was only built in 1855. I think everyone was just so tired of the burn and rebuild cycle, and expected that whatever they built would just burn again anyway, that they sort of gave up, and unfortunately, that's the version that survived. Then it was only lived in for a few decades before the emperor moved to Tokyo. It's still used for coronations and some other ceremonies, though.