The Road Most Taken

Today was a little less hectic than yesterday. Though we'd intended to see the big parade, we didn't make it. Sucker started at 9 and was long. Though we've been getting up early, today we took it more on vacation time. I think we both needed it.

We finally did some touristy thing as we took the day and visited temples and historical sites. Our guide book said we'd be able to do all these things in a matter of three hours or so. It tooks us about four hours to do just two and we had to rush through the third as it was closing. Bummer.

I won't bore you with all the details. Sooner or later I'll buy a Flickr account so you can see the million or so snaps I took today. However, I'll give you a taste of what I did on this day of my summer vacation.


That's the Golden Pavilion. Bet you'd never have guessed. This is part of the Rokuon-Ji Temple. There was a lot of pretty greenery to see and a nice little shrine area where Kristen and I lit candles.
Hers is "alleviate stress." Mine is "be very fine."

Kristen rocks the bells at the temple like her name was LL Cool J.

From there we went to the Ryoanji Temple, famous for steakburgers it's rock garden




where I had this moment of zen:

Then we hit the Old Imperial Palace Ninna-Ji which since it was the largest place, we got there twenty minutes to closing.



We both fell in love with this orange pagoda, though I haven't the foggiest what it is.



Then there was this thing. It was pretty.

I'm very sorry I can't tell you more about the palace. It was absolutely awesome, but we were literally sprinting through the place, taking pictures like mad as we went.

Speaking of pictures, Japan has got to be a photographer's best friend. You can point your camera anywhere, at anything and come up with an interesting image. Old or new stuff. Trees, people, vending machines. This is maybe the most visually interesting country I've been in.

Now, let's get down to the important stuff. What did I have for dinner? Well, I broke my streak of not eating at McDonald's by eating at McDonald's tonight. But it was good! I was shocked. Plus the workers all wear old school McDonald's uniforms, so they get points for that.

There's the menu in English. It's smaller than what they have in the US, but it gets the job done. I made it a point to order the weirdest thing on the menu, so I had the EBI Filet-O. Essentially it's a Filet 'O Shrimp. It was delicious.

We also had these Mango Pies.
Unlike the US pies which you could cut diamonds with, these were light and flaky and yummy.

I think we're getting ready to go back out (it's only 6:17 PM here) so I'm going to wrap this up. I forgot to take the critters along, so here's a gratuitous shot of Jet Jaguar conquering the room decorations:

PS: since we've been here, we've missed both a typhoon and an earthquake. w00t!

Thank you for Smorking

Smorking OK after a long day like we had. Lots of traveling, more rain, less English.


To continue my last post, here's the bullet train. Ours was on the right. This thing really moves, and it's smooth as you can imagine. It didn't feel like the trip took any time at all, when in fact it took nearly three hours.


As you can see, Godzilla and Gamera are busy checking out the scenery. When we weren't in a tunnel, there was some nice country side to look at. Most of it was going by too fast to get any worthwhile pictures of, but that didn't stop me from trying. In fact, I did catch this interesting shot.


Seems someone forgot to climb in the luggage and had to make it to Kyoto on his own.

So, here we are in Kyoto. It's a lot less English friendly than Tokyo, but we're still getting around ok. Tokyo is super modern, but Kyoto is a bit more on the old side. It looks more like the stereotypical Asian city you think of with wooden buildings, narrow streets and electricity wires running everywhere.



The hotel also has the most complicated toilet I've ever seen.



The bottom thing flips down to reveal about half a dozen buttons that do things I just don't understand. All I want to do is just do my business and leave, but apparently the Japanese have elivated that to an art.

Anyway, we walked around a bit. A long bit, as it was. Ate lunch at a Korean place where there were no English menus and I haven't the foggiest idea what either of us ate (she had a soup of some kind, I had fried rice something. Both were very good, actually.)

After lunch, we walked around some more. Then the streets started filling. I think I mentioned this festival going on? Well, the people were coming in droves and pretty soon, it was like a wall of people moving through. Kristen tired earlier than I did, which is a strange thing as it's usually the other way around.

Took a subway, took a cab, got back, ate dinner and here we are. I got more to tell, we went to a Namco Wonderland arcade, ifor instance, but it's going to have to wait. I'm about falling asleep as I type this, so until next time...

Bullet Train Blog

Right now I'm stilling on the bullet train without internet. I'll have some photos to go with this, but I just wanted to jot down a few things while I had some time.

Man, this is a fast critter but you really don't feel it until you pass another train or enter a tunnel. There's something to that one piece rail system, I guess. It's also, like nearly everything else here in Japan, a model of effency. When they tell you your train is leaving at 10:33, it's leaving at 10:33, come hell or high water.

If you've seen the movie Bullet Train, with Sonny Chiba in a minor role, it's nothing like that though. If you haven't, that's the movie Hollywood ripped off for Speed. No bombs on the train, thank goodness.

We're on the way to Kyoto. We don't have too much of an agenda, like how most of this trip is running. That's just how Kristen and I roll. There's a lantern festival we're going to try to check out, but that's about it. Wednesday we'll be back at the Conrad in Tokyo and all that.

I think my time is running short, but I wanted to do a few quick reviews. It's been ages since I've done anything and I have some time, so here goes.

First up, Lode Runner DS. Basically, if you played any previous version of Lode Runner, you know what you're in for. There's nothing new, it's just Lode Runner and the Champion edition. There's really not even anything special for the DS, which is a good thing. You see the full map on the top screen (which I end up watching most of the time) and a closer view on the bottom. There's a level editor and that's it for frills.

Even though this was one of those Apple ][ games I played the snot out of, it's still fun and still kinda hard. Probably not coming to America and maybe not worth the import price (I really don't know what Play-Asia would charge for this. I think it cost 3800 yen.) Still, if you're interested, there's not a lot of Japanese in it, so it's an easy pick up.

(And this is one of the things I love about Kristen. While I'm looking at console games, she picks this up and walks over and is like "this looks like something you would like." Excellent score babe. Right on the money.)

Another Kristen find was Eddie Costa's "Guys and Dolls Like Vibes." I was in the vibes section of the CD store (Japanese jazz stores arrange according to instrument, FYI) and she pulled this one out, attracted by the "jazz versions of showtunes" aspect. I was a little hesitant, it was showtunes and on Coral, not a jazz label by any yardstick. But she flipped it over and said "look! Bill Evans!" and I was sold. (I'm getting her trained well.) Plus it was a nifty mini-LP sleeve, and I'm a sucker for those.

Anyway, it's really good. I forgot I had some Eddie Costa on my iPod already and I love vibe players, so why not? Yes, it's a little on the light side, but Costa and Evans have some nice chemistry. It's also interesting to hear Bill Evans in this time period (1958) where he was playing with Miles and still finding the style that would make him THE Bill Evans.

Then there's this Les De Merle CD "Spectrum." OK, it's dated (they do "Aquarius" from Hair) but it's enjoyable in it's own way. Kind of reminds me of Buddy Rich Big Band records from the same time period. And there's no denying dude has some serious drum chops, like the afforementioned Mr. Rich.

(At this point, we were pulling into station.)