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After our trip, when I’ve mentioned to people that I’ve been in Japan recently, they often express surprise and curiosity. Since Americans tend to think of Japan as a very small country (which is true, speaking in relative terms of geography) and since the media was flooded with images of the destruction caused by the [...]

Yes, I’m still working my way through the photos I took in Kyoto. Real Life has been getting in the way of such things, but I just posted over 50 of the best photos I took during our stroll through the gardens at Heian Jingu Shrine. The shrine has a good deal of historical, cultural [...]

It’s a bit startling to notice that we’ve been back from Japan for over a week now. I’ve been busy with getting back into the swing of the businesses, catching up with yard work, herding the cats, etc. (Speaking of the cats: if you’re in Boulder and need a cat or dog sitter, ask me [...]

I’ve posted ten photos taken outside of Sanjusangendo here . You might want to read my previous post about this place if you don’t know of it already.

I posted a dozen or so photos from our first full day in Kyoto on my flickr page here. These were taken during a walk from the Yasaka Shrine up to the large statue of Kannon and across to Kiyomizudera. It’s a long walk and it involves hills, steep stairs, and throngs of tourists and [...]

We’re packing up and checking out of the hotel shortly, beginning the long haul back to home. I haven’t been blogging much not because we haven’t been having a good time; on the contrary, I suppose I haven’t been blogging much because we have been having a good time. Yesterday we took a local train [...]

Everything you need to know about Japanese and Western toilets, explained in one handy sign found in a restroom in Heian-Jingu shrine: Oddly enough, this particular restroom didn’t even have a Western-style toilet. I guess it was a general-purpose public-service sort of sign. Heian-Jingu was one of the places we visited on our first trip [...]

…two new modular origami books by Tomoko Fuse, Unit Origami Wonderland and Unit Origami Fantasy. They’re the same format and layout as Unit Origami Essence, which I picked up here last year. As far as I know they’re not available in English, although I did run across Japanese versions of a couple of her books [...]

It’s 5:21AM Kyoto time and I’m more alert than I was at around 7:00PM yesterday when I wrote the previous post. I thought I’d post some random observations before we head out for the day. There’s a show on TV that seems to be about the handwriting practices of the elderly, or about some sort [...]

We’re in Japan for our yearly vacation. Our original plans, made nearly a year ago, involved spending about 2.5 weeks here. We were going to spend about a week in Tokyo, a few days in Kobe, and another week in Kyoto. Then, as you may have heard, there was a big earthquake, a tsunami, and [...]