Katsura and Himeji

We started off the day by taking the subway and rail to Katsura Rikyu. It was raining quite hard, and by the time we got to the villa, our jackets, shoes and pants were all soaked through. Along the way I decided that we should start calling our cabin in Alta "Alta Rikyu". Maybe I'll make up signs and offer tours. The grounds and villas were spectacular but the tour was a little too structured, and even had a guard trailing along to sweep up stragglers. The combination of the guard telling us to move on, the interdiction of tripods AGAIN (WHY?) and the heavy rain made it pretty hard to get a decent shot in, but I gave it a few tries. Here are a few picture of the villa:





From Katsura, we took a cab to Kyoto station, where I took my now full (238 photos on a 512 MB card) memory stick to the camera store in the Porta underground mall for offloading to CD. It was a little over priced and took 40 minutes, but now the card is free for the rest of the trip! From here, we hopped on the Shinkansen to Himeji, where it thankfully was not raining, and walked the grounds of the castle.

I took a few pictures




And got a few on digital which I was unable to get on film before the bird flew away!



The castle and it's grounds are impressive and beautiful in a way that defies description, at least by me. You can see photos of it beforehand, read about it in twenty different books or take a virtual 3D tour, but nothing prepares you for it's grandeur. This goes for the outside of course, but most especially when you tour the interior, with it's meter thick supports which reach almost from bottom to top.


Here is a photo of the wooden lattice of the castle.


And a few more views.






It truly is one of the most elegant and impressive man made structures that I have ever seen.

We went to dinner at the same restaurant as yesterday and had mostly the same things, with the addition of a Kyoto green vegetable soup and few other interesting things. In order we have (skimmed tofu, some kind of soup that I forgot the name of -- I think it had fried tofu in it though, cuttlefish, hokke, Kyoto vegetable soup:






Desert was sesame (!) and vanilla ice cream in mochi. Although I enjoy trying strange ice cream flavors, sesame ice cream ... sucks.

Chloe and Gail's Nara adventure

Special Guest Blog entry by Chloe!!!

This entry is a guest blog by Chloe because Max decided to forgo a trip to Nara in favor of wandering the streets of Kyoto searching for Geisha with Kenji.
We spent most of the morning trekking around Kyoto and, because Max's shoulder was bothering him, I was relegated to the role of camera sherpa. Max, Gail, and Kenji had decided to skip Nara because they were tired and had already seen the city. I agreed since I figured the temples in and around Kyoto would suffice. At lunch someone mentioned that Nara housed a 20m tall Buddha, one of the biggest bronze statues in the world! This, in conjunction with lugging the camera equipment around for a few hours that morning, made me decide to visit Nara. I announced that I was going alone to Nara to see the Buddha (thus no camera bag to carry!). This was greeted with an immediate offer by Kenji to accompany me since I have no japanese language skills and would most likely end up on the wrong train or stranded unable to return to Kyoto. After walking around all morning in the hot sun Kenji was a little worse for wear but his chivalry forced him to make the offer. After fruitlessly trying to convince Kenji that I would be able to navigate my way around Nara and the train station, Gail offered to accompany me. So the girls set out to Nara meaving Max and Kenji to their own devices for a few hours. After a calm and uneventful 45 minute train ride we arrived at the Nara train station and took a cab to the Nigatsu-do, an enormous temple overlooking Nara


Since arriving in Japan I hadn't seen much in the way of wildlife (unless you consider the frighteningly large Japanese carp wildlife) and I was rather excited to see deer wandering around the temples. Gail was looking at me suspiciously as I made little cooing sounds, remarking on how cute and bambi like they were.

I soon realized that while a few deer are cute, lots of deer are rather scary. As we continued down towards Todai temple and the Daibutsu-den where the Buddha was housed we heard the hysterical crying of a little girl. I looked over and saw two small children trying desperately to eat ice cream while their father valiantly attempted to stave off the marauding deer with his backpack. This was a losing proposition as he was far outnumbered. Here's one guarding the temple entrance.


We arrived at the impressive Daibutsu-den (apparently the largest wooden building in the world!) and there was the Buddha


I could not believe the sheer size of the statue and how inconsequential all the viewers looked in comparison. Here's a photo with people in the foreground for scale.


Perhaps my favorite statues were these warrior heads, or Max and Kenji as I have named them (Max is on the right).


We continued down towards the Nara train station and once out of the temple area we were able to eat ice cream unmolested by deer (green tea "macha" for me). Another smooth train ride back and we were ready for dinner with Max and Kenji. We hurried back to the Doshisha only to find it deserted and Max and Kenji just returning from a multi-course dinner! Unfortunately no restaurants in the area looked the least bit inviting (completely empty at 7pm, not a good sign) and we ended up getting take out noodles from the neighborhood 7-11. Better than a US 7-11, but not very good. At least I got some Pocky (chocolate dipped cookie sticks) for dessert.