Category: Japan 2008

As I mentioned two posts ago, I’ve run out of steam for writing about the Japan trip. Blogging about traveling in a foreign country ultimately seems a futile exercise because so much happens and there are only so many hours in the day in which to write (and so much energy with which to write). Hence much goes unwritten and undescribed. I’ve realized in retrospect that, in an attempt to provide a broad account of our daily adventures, I’ve neglected many of the brief, subtle, surprising, and delightful moments that make visiting Japan so wonderful and faintly magical. The next time we travel I may alter my writing strategy and attempt to focus my efforts on these moments. read more

I’ve finished uploading photos from our trip to the Photo Gallery section of this website. The photos are grouped by the cities we visited. We didn’t put captions on them; if you have any questions you can either email me or Tracie or post a comment here.

Click here to go directly to the new photos. You can also always reach the gallery by clicking the Photo Gallery link under the heading “Adam’s Stuff” on the side of this site.

(Yes, the photo gallery doesn’t look like the rest of this site. It used to be more nicely integrated but I believe that the WordPress plug-in that provides integration for the Gallery software created the security vulnerability that was exploited the last time this site was hacked.) read more

It’s probably obvious by now that my attention has been drawn away from this blog. Much to my surprise we’ve been home for two weeks now; honestly it feels more like a week. Between the various demands of getting back into the swing with both businesses and with the unusual circumstances of Tracie’s mother residing here (still) because of her health problems, I just haven’t had the time, energy, and/or inclination to blog much. At this point I’m going to stop berating myself, gracefully acknowledge the reality of the situation, and try to bring the accounts of our Japan adventures to a close today. read more

As I mentioned previously, I foolishly did not bring my camera to the dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Makino. Sid had his camera, though, and sent me a few pictures that he took (and that other people took with his camera). A taxi driver took this one:

The waitress took the last one, as you might guess. (Yes, the flash didn’t fire.)

Sorry for the lapse in posting. As you can imagine, I’ve been busy with getting out of vacation mode and back into normal daily living/working/etc. mode. Of course this transition is complicated by Tracie’s mother’s hospitalization, but we’re making do.

I wasn’t able to post photos until we reached Kyoto. Here are photos from our day in Tokyo with Tamae, our guide. I described this day in greater detail previously so I’m just going to put in photos and very brief descriptions here. (Incidentally, I just noticed that some of these photo-heavy pages load kind of slowly. Sorry about that; I don’t know of an easy way to tell my blogging software to insert page breaks in a more intelligent manner.) read more

My computer says that it’s 8:19AM on Monday, a fact which I’m trying to accept at face value. In truth, my jetlag seems to be dissipating. I’m still waking up about two hours earlier than usual but I no longer feel nearly as temporally dislocated as I did two days ago.

While staring at the ceiling at about 5:00AM today I thought about things that happened in Japan that I haven’t yet covered in this blog but bear recounting. I realized that several of them have to do with food, so I’m going to lump them together in this post. read more

We’re home. We’ve actually been home for about 24 hours but I haven’t had a chance to put anything up here before now. The return trip was uneventful. I don’t think that there’s much to say about it except that nine-hour flights are somewhat awful to endure. I spent most of the time playing with my DS Lite, I think.

Long-distance travel and the resulting change of time zones is just odd. We woke up in Kyoto at 6:00AM (Kyoto time), traveled by plane for about 12 hours, auto for a total of about three hours, and sat around in between for a bunch more hours, and arrived at home in Boulder at about 5:00PM (Boulder time) on the same day, even though our total travel time was nearly 24 hours. read more

Today we travel back to our home in Boulder. I may or may not have the opportunity to write another post before we leave. If I don’t post again shortly, it’ll be at least 24 hours before my next post. It takes quite some time to get from Kyoto to Boulder.

I have enough thoughts for a couple more posts about this trip, and I plan to put up lots more photos, so keep checking this site for another few days. Thanks for your interest!

One box of four packages of green tea KitKats. How could I resist? I couldn’t, obviously.

Today is our last full day in Kyoto; tomorrow we start our long journey home just after noon. We didn’t have any specific plans for the day. Perhaps because we ended up with more Japanese cash on hand than we expected, our thoughts turned to shopping. Tracie had seen some bowls in Tokyo which she regretted passing up (mostly because we didn’t have any way to get them home) and I was arriving at the conclusion that plastic Gundam models are harder to obtain in this country than I had expected and hence regretting that I’d passed some up in Tokyo. We seriously considered hopping on a shinkansen, buzzing up to Tokyo, doing some mad shopping, and buzzing back in time for dinner. Ultimately Tracie ruled out this notion on the grounds that she’s “old and crippled”. I don’t think of her as either, but she’s the one who has to walk in her shoes, so to speak. read more