Yesterday, in hopes of avoiding the rain, we decided to do a little shopping in downtown Kyoto.  We went to the shopping arcade, a covered pedestrian only street with little shops on both sides.  It seemed quite busy for a Friday afternoon, so maybe other people had the same idea as us.  We found a store that sold primarily chopsticks.  I had no idea how expensive chopsticks good be, but they had some for 50,000 yen (or ~ $450).  We also wandered through the Nishiki Market, which seemed to be the equivalent of the Ferry building in San Francisco.  There was a ton of…um…interesting food items, as well as a bunch of ingredients I had never seen before.  We also found a Japanese cooking store, with a wall of expensive knives.  I thought about buying one, but decided $250 may have been a bit much for a knife.  Hopefully I’ll be able to find a Japanese knife for the slightly more reasonable price of $100.  We had a quick lunch back at the arcade before walking over to the Gion district.  We were only able to see a couple temples from the outside because we got there too late.  Most of the temples close by 4:30, so most of our time was spent walking down narrow streets in the rain.   It didn’t take too long before we got tired, so we hopped in a cab and headed back to the hotel.