Category: Japan 2011

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 earthquake and tsunami, perhaps it is easy to assume that the entire country is dealing with the catastrophe. This is untrue in some ways–in the ways that people are probably thinking–but true in other ways. read more

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 and spiritual significance, and it also happens to have spectacular gardens. We had visited them several years ago and were completely dazzled by the cascades of cherry blossoms. We returned this year and were not disappointed. Click here to see the set of photos on flickr. read more

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 for the name of ours. She does an excellent job; our cats adore her.) I’ve been meaning to jot down a few retrospective notes about our trip.

On this trip to Japan we were honored to be invited to the home of our friends, Sid and Takako Makino. They live in Nishinomiya which is not far from Kobe (and, if you happen to be a baseball fan, the home city of the Hanshin Tigers). We took a shinkansen from Kyoto to Kobe; Sid met us there and we took a local train to Nishinomiya. Takako met us near the train station with their car and gave us a brief tour around the town, stopping at a couple of highlights, before driving to their house. Their home is mostly furnished in Western style although the sofa, nearby chairs and coffee table were lower than you’d likely find in a house in the US. read more

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 school children, but it’s a beautiful area. Since we’ve been through it before I was trying to take pictures of things I hadn’t photographed previously, and/or things of interest other than the main attractions. read more

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 to the Arashiyama area in Kyoto, a part of town we haven’t visited previously. We went to a large temple there (whose name currently escapes me–I’ll post it later) whose gardens currently have a dazzling array of blooming azaleas. Tracie was photographed by no less than six Japanese tourists while perched on the veranda of the temple overlooking the koi pond. They asked for permission first, of course. read more

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 to Japan but haven’t been back until yesterday. The sakura were spectacular. I think we caught them just past their peak because the pink color was somewhat less saturated than when we saw them in 2007, but that’s just an observation, not a quibble. I took a bunch of photos but may not get around to posting many until after the trip. read more

…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 which I have in English editions.

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 of social club for the literate elderly, or possibly about elderly people who enjoy both handwriting and doing laundry.

The TV programming seems to have fewer strange (strange to Western eyes, anyway) game shows on than usual. It could be that we’re not finding the right channels, but I suspect it has more to do with a general edict from the government that people observe “self-restraint”, i.e. some amount of sombre respect for the tens of thousands lost in the tsunami. This was described in a recent J-List mailing, and I have to agree with the author that it’s not a good idea. Yes, it is entirely appropriate to show respect for the departed and the displaced, but on the other hand Japan has some serious economic challenges on its hands, and it’s not going to help the economy at all if people are sitting at home trying to be respectful rather than out spending money in restaurants and on consumer goods. read more

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 a still-unresolved mess involving several damaged nuclear power plants. That started on March 11 and we were scheduled to fly to Tokyo on March 31. Skipping over the details, we eventually decided to shorten the trip and spend a week in Kyoto, which is 300 miles away from Fukushima and hence unaffected by aftershocks, power outages, and ongoing concerns about radiation leaks and other unfortunate events. read more