Our final sightseeing on this marathon Japan blog is, naturally, the Imperial Palace. This was originally the shogun's palace, and unlike other castles, the complicated series of gates, moats and walls looked like they actually thought about defense when constructing this. It was the largest castle in the world until it was destroyed when the shogun was overthrown. The emperor inherited the site for his palace, and a series of new palaces were built and destroyed. The current palace dates from 1964, so it's bound to be ugly, but fortunately visitors can't catch a glimpse of it. The only open area is the impressive gardens surrounding the moat and walls of the imperial compound. Another trivial pursuit fact: In the 1980's the land value of the Imperial Palace was greater than the land value for the entire state of California.

Just some nicer photos of the palace interior to show the whole thing doesn't look like a benihana. The women at right are (oviously) dressed in kimonos. That's actually fairly common in Japan. Of course traditional costume is long gone, but almost everyone would have a kimono for formal events and certain holidays. Of course, nothing in Japan is simple, so you can devote your life to the intricacies of kimonos, and the best ones, as worn by geishas for example can cost a fortune.

Thought I'd go with a Bridges of Imperial Palace theme while I digress into attacking the Imperial family. In my largely uninformed opinion, this has to be the wimpiest royal family anywhere in the world. Their giant claim to fame is they are the world's oldest royal family, by a long shot, since they've been ruling Japan pretty much since there's been a Japan, while other ruling families take over and get overthrown in the general tussle of ruling. But the way they've survived is to be almost invisible. Almost invariably for the first thousand years, the shoguns who nominally served them actually ran the country and ignored and humiliated them. And the emperors' response was to sit in their gardens, making tea and writing haikus. Keep in mind that the Japanese believed their emperors were gods at the time, which should have given them some leverage. They have a brief flash of willpower in the late 1800's when the shogun is finally overthrown and the emperor moves to Tokyo, but he's promptly coopted by the military and ignored again, albeit in a nicer palace. Then after the second world war, the military is wiped away, so it's hard to see who's going to boss the emperors around now, but believe it or not, the bureaucracy takes over. The Imperial Household Agency, basically the emperors' servants, totally dictates what the emperor does and whether he's allowed out of his palace, they even gave the current princess a nervous breakdown because they kept pushing her to have a boy. Most husbands wouldn't tolerate the servants giving their wives a breakdown, but not in this family. Anyway, I do think the bridges are pretty.

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.