Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Golden Temple

So after Gion Cho, we got into a taxi that took us to the other side of town, to the Golden Temple. I don't have my nifty historical information in front of me (sorry), but short version of the story is that a very important guy in Japanese history came here to retire, and buit this place and then covered it in gold as a retirement home of sorts. Since then, it's been repainted to make it five times shinier than when it was originally built. Here it is:
The Golden Temple was probably the most crowded place we visited in Kyoto. It certainly felt like there were more people there than elsewhere. The result is pictures like this:
Visitors aren't actually allowed inside the building (and why would you want to go in anyway? The pretty part is outside), but the grounds around the temple are quite lovely as well.
The grounds of the temple are also home to a very old tea house. It's not currently in use, but it is very pretty, too:
By the time we finished at the Golden Temple, it was getting to be mid-afternoon and we were a little tired of sight seeing, so we went on back to the hotel for a quick rest before dinner. We spent the evening looking through a Japanese department store and finding dinner. My big accomplishment for this trip: the guy at the restaurant we ate at for dinner that night assumed we wouldn't need English menus based on my Japanese. I'm terribly proud!
The next morning, we took our time getting up and to the train station, and by the next afternoon we were back in Sasebo. It was a quick trip, but a good one.
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The other Gion Cho

After our visit to Kiyomizu, our sightseeing walk took a less formal turn. Our next point of interest was a section of town known for the fact that Geishas often perform there. This area is known as Gion, just like my neighborhood in Sasebo. (Presumably, the name means something, but I don't know what.) Since we weren't looking for a specific place, per se, this involved just kind of strolling in a general direction until we were satisfied. Here's what we saw:








And finally, we arrived in Gion itself:


Having seen this famous area, and having spent most of the day walking, we decided it was time to hire a taxi and see the other main attraction of Kyoto: the Golden temple. So we were off again...

Monday, April 28, 2008

Kyoto Sightseeing Part 2

So, where were we? Right. On our way to Kiyomizu. The name of this shrine means clear water, I believe. It's perched up on the top of a hill overlooking the valley and the city of Kyoto. In the grand tradition of touristy spots everywhere, the streets approaching it were lined with shop after shop selling anything and everything that might appear vaguely Japanese. This made the walk up much more interesting. Here's some of what we saw:





Finally we got to the top of the hill and entered into the shrine area:


As usual, there were several places to wash your hands and mouth if you were going to pray:




And here's a view of one of the temple buildings:

One famous feature of Kiyomizu is a shrine devoted to "love affairs". Love affairs means all things related to love, in Japanese terms. Outside this shrine are two rocks, and if you can successfully get from one to the other with your eyes closed, then you're supposed to have good luck in love for the next year. Here's one girl attempting to make it the last few feet.

The general trend there seemed to be that if you wanted to try, you got a good friend to direct you to keep you from bumping into the other people or from falling down the stairs that were a few feet from the rock on the other side. It was fun to watch.
But probably the best thing about this temple was the view:















So having had a nice look around, we set off down another shop-lined street in search of some lunch and something interesting to see... More to come...

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Kyoto Sightseeing Part One

While Mom and Dad were here, we took a trip to Kyoto. This gave me the chance to ride the bullet train for the first time, which was pretty cool, and of course there was the joy of seeing Kyoto. We stayed in a Japanese style hotel that was within walking distance of a lot of the sights, so on our first morning there, we set off for a walking tour.
First stop was a Budhist temple devoted to statues of various gods. It's one of the longest buildings in Japan. Inside, of course, there was no pictures allowed inside where all the statues are, but outside looked like this.








From there we went to the home of a famous potter, which was supposed to be a good example of a traditional Japanese home. Unfortunately, it's tucked away in the middle of an otherwise un-touristy neighborhood and really hard to find. Fortunately, it's in Japan, so we asked some nice lady on the street how close we were, and she literally walked us there.

The first interesting feature of the house was the picture policy. I asked the lady at the front desk if I could take pictures. She asked me to sign in, giving my name, address, and purpose (hobby) and then I was allowed to snap away. It was worth the effort.
Here's the main central room:

Here's one of the kilns out back:


And here's the other kiln:


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The house was incredibly beautiful and very Japanese:

From there, we headed on to find a shrine that was recommended to us by pretty much everyone we talked to before we went: Kiyomizu. Stay tuned.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Kashima Shrine

While my parents were here, we took advantage of one of the wonderful MWR trips offered on base. This one was to Kashima Shrine. It was a short drive and when the bus parked, what we saw was this:
Since the tour guide was not especially talkative, we were a little worried at first that the Tori Gate was it. It seemed a long way to come, even if it was nice. But we meandered down the road, looking at the various shops along the way, and before long we stumbled upon the shrine itself, which turned out to be especially beautiful with the cherry blossoms in full view. Here it is:


When we had walked around enough to be satisfied with the view, we were carted off for lunch and then a tour of a sake mill. Sorry about the lack of pictures of that, but this was much prettier. :-) More to come later...
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Sunday, April 20, 2008

Hanami!

One of the best features of spring in Japan is the cherry blossoms. To celebrate this delightful asspect of spring, the Japanese celebrate by having Hanami parties. Hana means flower, Mi is to look/see/watch. So Hanami is a flower viewing party. Hanami parties generally involve not only lovely blossoms, but food and alcohol. So they're basically picnics. JAFCO, the new company that I work for, threw a Hanami party while my folks were here, so we all got together and went. The day of the party turned out to be cold, but the blossoms were still incredible. Here we are eating:
After everyone was done eating, there were a few special presentations by various talented people. The gentleman in this picture is blackbelt in several martial arts. He demonstrated some moves with lots of different weapons while the lady in the picture did marvelous impromptu translations.
Then a woman whose mother teaches tea ceremony walked us through that process so that we could try the matcha (yummy!) and get a rough idea of how that works:

And of course the cherry blossoms were everywhere, so Zack and I took a few of our annual cherry blossom pictures. Here's the group picture for the year:
So a good time was had by all.
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Friday, April 18, 2008

Unzen Revisited

While Mom and Dad were here, I was determined to take them to some of the more interesting places I've been. While we didn't do a ton of long range trips, we did make a day trip back to Unzen. Unzen is a tiny city on a mountain. It's known for it's onsens (causing all kinds of linguistic confusion) and for the hot springs bubbling up throughout it in which Christian missionaries were once boiled. The mountain is actually an active volcano that last exploded in the mid-90's... repeatedly. It went off several times over the course of three or four years.
Last time I went, I visited the town with Melanie, but we weren't able to go up the mountain because it was rainy and foggy. However, this time, the weather was perfect, so we took a quick look through town before driving up the tiny little road that offers a closer view of the volcano. Near the top, there was an opportunity to take a cable car even higher to get a closer look around, so up we went:

Clearly, the view from the top was lovely. It's amazing to think that not that long ago, that thing was spitting lava everywhere. I'm glad I got to go back and see it. Posted by Picasa

Thursday, April 17, 2008

ILC in April

Mom and Dad came for a visit this April. They convienently arrived Wednesday evening the night before an International Ladies Club event. So the morning after their arrival, Mom and I abandoned poor Dad and I dragged Mom to the ILC lunch. The featured performance for the month was a traditional rain dance from somewhere in this area. It was performed by locals ranging in age from may be 10ish to retiring age. We were told that their performance for us was kind of a trial run for the actual performance which would take place that weekend. All in all, it was very good. The primary music was taiko drums with some flutes in the back. Most of it was one repeating pattern, which continued while each of the characters in the dance took their turns performing solos on the main central drum. Here's the drummers:
This, I gathered, is an important community member of some sort calling a dragon to ask for rain.

Several people did that, then the dragon himself came out. He waved his horns and beat on the drum:

I'm not sure who this is supposed to be, sorry...


Finally, a guardian Chinese dragon came out and entertained us all.
Clearly, I missed part of the storyline some how, but it was interesting to watch all the same. What made it more neat was the fact that they had people of all ages participating. It was neat to see smaller kids get involved in their heritage like that. It was a highly enjoyable experience.

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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Supply Corps Ball

So I've gotten behind again on my posting. Sorry about that. The last weekend in March was the Supply Corps Ball. Since I've been here, I've discovered that the Navy likes to have balls. They're basically prom for adults. There's a ton of them. My theory is that this is because the guys are gone so often, that they have to have 200 a year to give them a chance to appear at one. Luckily, Zack was home for the ball sponsored by the Supply guys, so we got to get all dressed up and go.
The Supply Corps Ball, like every ball in this area, was held at the Harbor View (the only upscalish restaurant on base). It began with a cocktail hour, followed by speeches by various people about how wonderful supply types are. (And I don't mean that jokingly. They really are super important to the Navy.) This was followed by an excellent dinner of either chicken, pork, fish or beef depending on what you ordered ahead of time. (Zack got us the chicken.) The featured entertainment for the night was a high school taiko drum group. Taiko drumming is a traditional Japanese version of a drum line performance and this group was really incredible:
They were as good as any professional group in the States in our opinion. This was followed by some very traditional toasts with Sake. The important folks at the ball cracked open a barrel and we toasted to everyone important to the Navy in both Japan and the US starting with the Emperor and working our way down. We drank from wooden cups and wore these lovely headbands that were provided:
Once everyone was sufficently liquored up, we were all reminded that drinking and driving is a terrible idea and that the taxis would be happy to take us home. Then the dancing began. It was the first time I ever saw anyone in a kimono do the electric slide. Highly entertaining:
So a good evening was had by all. I'll get more up to date on the posting here pretty soon, I promise.
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