In late September 2012 I traveled to Osaka, Japan for work. Actually, I was in a Suburb outside of Osaka. It was a quaint town reminiscent of the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. The major difference was it was spotless. Every morning you would see homeowners outside sweeping the street in front of their house. There was a sense of pride I don’t often see in the US.

I was there 2 weeks and despite working 12-14 hour days as well as the Saturday I was there, I made it to Kyoto. Having seen pictures of it in books, I was excited to see it first hand.

During our visit, (after we left the golden temple) a weak typhoon decided to make its way inland and eventually, it started to rain and continued to rain for the remainder of the day.