Annnnnndddd we're back.

And in so many ways, are we back.
We're back in NY from Philly.
Back in NY from the honeymoon.
Back in...well, ok, I thought that was going somewhere, but it isn't.

We got back from Hawaii last Friday, but honestly, I just haven't had the energy to talk to you people. The last week was spent setting up our kickass apartment, dealing with all the wedding gifts we got, decompressing from the last many months and so on.

Let me just say some things about Kauai before I get into the present.
I know I've said it before, but it truly is the most beautiful place ever. This is coming from a guy who has been literally everywhere there is to go, so trust me.
The people are extremely chill. At least the people we met, which only included white folk - haoles, as they call them. Some are "local haoles" - born in Hawaii, but white, but mostly haoles - whites who moved there at some point. But they like to think they are locals. Imperialism at it's best, according to most Miriams.
It seems like most people drive around in pickup trucks, and everyone hauls around a surf board with them.
Oh yeah - we went to Poipou, this town on the south shore and went boogie boarding. Huge freaking waves, for real. It was pretty scary at times, but definitely awesome. The whole timing thing is very interesting - unless you get up on the wave at just the right second, you miss it. When you catch it, though, then it's an awesome ride. Getting caught up in a wave and getting sucked under and slammed isn't fun. Frightening to feel totally out of control, trying to hold limbs close to my body, thinking about hitting rocks and turtles (seriously - they get swept up in the big waves and you can see them as the wave crests.) Anyway, I totally could see living a life of surfing as much as possible. Good stuff.

boy is it nice here

seriously.

not that these pics enable you to see anything, but please be assured that we are having the best time in the most beautiful place on earth.

Some Enchanted Evening

Yesterday was our groundhog day.

We left Kyoto through the shrine gates and landed on an Island that's closer to Paradise than anything we've ever seen. And it was earlier than it was when we had left! So we had two Sundays. To the rest of the world, one day had passed. But to us (and everyone on our flight), 2 days had passed. Thus, we embodied the twin paradox and discovered Einstein was right. It first occurred to us that maybe we could live in this Sunday limbo forever, going back and forth across the dateline. And we considered how much we would pay to pause time eternally. But then we realized that it would all be ruined once we crossed the dateline backwards - we would be going forward in time. One twin only looks younger to the twin who stays.

But it was our groundhog day in more ways than one. Yesterday in Kyoto we saw rock gardens and lotus blossoms. We took off our shoes to enter temples. Yesterday in Kauai we saw a rock garden at the airport. A sign in a coffee shop in Kapa'a bore the Kanji letter for "peace." Our B&B required us to remove our shoes upon entering. We passed a restaurant called the "Blossoming Lotus" (which we ate at tonight--Monday, really, but Tuesday for us. . . not bad, although slightly too filling).

We had our second chance. Did we blow it?

The looking glass:

Us on our way through the looking glass:


Yesterday was our groundhog day.

We left Kyoto through the shrine gates and landed on an Island that's closer to Paradise than anything we've ever seen. And it was earlier than when we had left! So we had two Sundays. To the rest of the world, one day had passed. But to us (and everyone on our flight), 2 days had passed. Thus, we embodied the twin paradox and discovered Einstein was right. It first occurred to us that maybe we could live in this Sunday limbo forever, going back and forth across the dateline. And we considered how much we would pay to pause time eternally. But then we realized that it would all be ruined once we crossed the dateline backwards - we would be going forward in time. One twin only looks younger to the twin who stays.

But it was our groundhog day in more ways than one. Yesterday in Kyoto we saw rock gardens and lotus blossoms. We took off our shoes to enter temples. Yesterday in Kauai we saw a rock garden at the airport. A sign in a coffee shop in Kapa'a bore the Kanji letter for "peace." Our B&B required us to remove our shoes upon entering. We passed a restaurant called the "Blossoming Lotus" (which we ate at tonight--Monday, really, but Tuesday for us. . . not bad, although slightly too filling).

We had our second chance. Did we blow it?

On an island, somewhere off of Osaka

This morning, we woke up early, packed the last few things and went down for a breakfast set. We were going to be picked up by a tour guide for a 5 hour tour of some stuff in Kyoto. Thanks Danny and Natasha!

Us and The Nakamura:

Mr.Nakamura picked us up in a very posh car, wearing white gloves and a unifrom cap, all very fancy-like. He was extremely nice, and great guide. We went to a bunch of places that we had wanted to see, and were very glad we did so. The large zen rock garden was especially great. Really really great. After each stop. he would give us a frozen wet cloth to cool off with, and ice cold water. Along the way he would also draw us different diagrams of things, and was full of awesome information that we never would have known otherwise. We finally got to see some really incredible gardens, even nicer than ones we had seen before. It was really a great gift.
The last place we saw, and it was in a hurry so we could make our train, was a place called Fushimi-Inari Something Temple . It was full of thousands of orange gates, all in a row together that had paths between them. It was very reminiscent of the Christo gates in Central Park last year. The Japanese clearly aren't very original, and must have stolen the idea from him. It was strange that they didn't give him any credit.

One of many pics that The Nakamura insisted on taking of us:

Then it was off to Kyoto Station and on the train. And here we are.
Miriam is doing the crossword puzzle, while I tap away.

Sayonara, Japan and Aloha, Hawaii!

My gezaimas are killing me!

This will be the last post from Japan, though it will likely end up on the 'net when we get to Hawaii, sometime last week. EDIT: we have free wireless at the airport. yay.

Yesterday we had a really great day. We took a short train on a short train ride to Kurama, a very small village in the mountains outside of Kyoto, where there are some very beautiful, you guessed it, shrines and temples. I'm almost craving Disney World, in a Taco Bell kind of way.

Small town:

We got off the train, with little idea of where exactly to go, and not a bit of english in sight. We had the Lonely Planet guide, which had a vague map, and that helped somewhat. We made our way to the gate of the shrine, which is also near the bottom of the mountain. Upon paying, we got an even more vague cartoonish map. To my not-very-surprise, it was better than the Lonely Planet guides map.

Shriners palace:


We hiked up the top the mountain, seeing various small shrines along the way. It was extremely hot and sweaty, and we drank a lot of water to counter the heat. Good on us. Close to the top of the mountain, after about 45 minutes or so, we got to the main temple building, or honden. The view was incredible.
The view, being incredible:
Getting back to roots:


Rain was coming down periodically, and it was very cool. You know how in Japanese art, the rain is depicted as lines, as opposed to drops? It's because that's how it really looks. You can actually see the lines of the rain coming down, and it is pretty neat looking.

A common thing to do is to hike over the top of the mountain and go down the other side, and end up in another town call Kibune, so that's what we did. It was a really nice hike. It was weird to see many many people walking the trail wearing short skirts, open-back sandals, tight jeans, warm clothing, etc. Maybe they didn't know it would be insanely hot. Um.

When you come off the trail in Kibune, there is a very narrow road lined with ryokan and restaurants, with a river running alongside. In the summer, a lot of the places build platforms spanning the river (only about 20 feet wide at most) and customers can happily eat nourishing eating food there. We tried to find some places that weren't all just fish, but you know how that goes.

Restaurants:

We ended up walking about 30 minutes back down the road to the train station, and caught a train right away back to Kyoto. A late lunch at some pizza place, and then back to the hotel for naps and laundry-doing, both sorely needed.

When we woke up, we spent some time packing to leave, and then took a final bike ride along what is known as the Path of the Philosopher (soon to be a major motion picture starring the Gowanus Canal, I'm sure.) It is a very beautiful path that winds it's way along a small canal in the southeastern part of Kyoto. The path runs through a very nice neighbourhood full of large houses with high garden walls that are sure to hide immaculate gardens. We scaled one wall and were immediately set upon by attack dogs, clearly put there to keep away intruders like us. We barely managed to escape with only minor bites and scrapes.
That didn't happen.
The ride was very nice, and the path was lovely. It was a great way to round out our solo Kyoto experience. We went back home, finished packing, wrote many postcards and hit the futon.

Me being sweaty:

Sorry Ansel:

Imperial, shmimperial, I'm the freakin' Shogun!

And away we went, riding our trusty (or is that rusty?) steeds towards the palace to rescue the Princess Fiona. But first we stopped alongside the lovely river that runs through Kyoto to call Mikey for his 24th birthday. Whoohooo!
The river:



On the phone with Mikey:

and another pic by the river that's just cool. click on it for a full size, if you didn't know that...

We rode on, hoping to be able to get "permission" to go on a free tour of the Imperial Palace Grounds. You have to apply, which means filling out a form. We had tried online, but it said it was completely full. Figuring we had a chance anyway, we went to the Imperial Household Agency and gave it our best shot. After much cajoling, bribery, and finally just filling out the form, we were given permission for the 2 o'clock tour. This gave us enough time to go to the tofuya, or tofu shop that the owner of the restaurant had told us to stop into.
Sweet.
Or neutral, as tofu tends to be. We rode over there, and found it pretty easily, not something that seems to happen a lot, especially when using the Lonely Planet guide. Have I mentioned that their maps are really bad? And that the addresses they give tend not to be right? Well, it deserves mentioning again.
We managed to make ourselves understood to the tofu makers, and they were pretty impressed with the fact that I was willing to part with Miriam for so few soybeans. After a few more tries, they understood that I was actually telling them that my father used to make tofu and had learned from a book. This impressed them even more.
Here's a vat of fresh tofu:

Mmmmm...so creamy and delicious. This is my creamy and delicious face.

After this nutritious breakfast (the original breakfast of champions - ask any yokozuna), we figured we had enough time to ride out to the Kinkakuji Temple, or Golden Pavilion. We didn't and figured that out about 20 really hot minutes into the ride. You may not know this, but it is really really really hot here in Kyoto, with basically 100% humidity. This means that it's very hot, and it rains for minutes at a time - sometimes very hard, sometimes just sprinkle, but all day, on and off. Very different. The moisture in the air is very much so.

So we rode back to the Imperial Palace, parked the bikes and took a cab to the Golden Pavilion. It's a famous place, not only for being gold (plated - cheap bastards), but because in 1950 it was burned to the ground by a young apprentice monk, for reasons that are unclear. He may have been overcome with some emotion. Or he tossed a cigarette butt in the wrong place. Which is why the warnings on cigarette packs here speak about how they are hazardous to your temple. They rebuilt the temple, and you would never know that just 50-some years ago, the place was an insurance-monks dream.
Here's the temple - it reflects too:

I forgot to say this earlier, but we had a plan to meet up with a friend of a college friend of Miriams, a tour guide named Michiko. She was coming with us to the Imperial Palace, and on to Nijo Palace afterwards.
We left the Golden Pavilion, and realized we had plum run out of cash. I say "plum", because the Japanese use plum paste in various ways, mostly pickled. They call it umeboshi. We had some travelers cheques and managed to find a bank to cash them. They took their time approving us, and we just made it to the Imperial Palace on time.
We met up with Michiko and joined the tour, which was pretty neat.
Here's us with Michiko:
And here's Miriam - I'm a big fan.

The palace is full of very cool buildings, none of which we could go in, but we heard about how they look on the inside. I'm sure you can just picture it.

In fact, picture this:
And this:
And here's a garden from inside:
And here we are, keeping cool:

Overall one of the best palaces I've been to.

After the Imperial Palace, we headed over to the Nijo Palace with Michiko, where she gave us a great tour of the place. By the way, the Japanese should really watch more Disney movies before they start calling these places "palaces". I mean, come on.
They did have these very cool floors called "nightingales" that were designed to make little chirping sounds as you walked on them so that the Shogun would be warned when someone was coming.
Here's what they look like from the bottom:

The shogun, by the way, was the military leader of Japan, under the Emperor. At some point, he took total control and made the emperor the titular head. The Meiji Restoration changed all that.

Here's a nice garden from the Nijo Palace, and another building from in the palace:





After the Nijo Palace, we went back to our hotel and passed out for a while. We wanted to go check out this hour-long performance of different Japanese artforms, such as flower arranging, Geisha-dancing, comedy, and English-translating. The show turned out to be pretty weak, but we both convinced ourselves it was "worth seeing." After the show, we took part in a tea ceremony, which was actually pretty cool. I can't imagine having to go through that every time I wanted tea, however. I think the Japanese don't want to either, which is why it's now just a ceremony.

A little dinner, a few drinks and off to bed.

So that was that. Another nice day in Japanland.


Oh yeah, this was a shrine we passed in the street. There were statues of pigs all over the place.

Here's some random videos

A Pachinko Parlor. They sit and watch balls fall around, while going deaf and insane. And pay lots of money in order to do so.




This here is some of the Tsujiki Fish Market insanity.
They drive these carts around and try to not kill each other



Here's a short clip of a guy we happened to see gonging the gong at the Nikko shrine. It was interesting because he would gong it, then move one little counter over to keep track of how many gongs he had gonged, then look at his watch to count how long the gong had gonged.




The Harajuku girls. They are very...interesting.

Commodore Perry very merry

Kyoto is beautiful. Pretty, picturesque, and calm. Yesterday we rode our bikes (yes, we have bikes here too! The hotel where we are staying, which, incidentally, has a pay TV in the room, gave them to us for free!) down this willow tree lined narrow street that is cut in half by a river and there is no railing from the street to the river. At night you can barely see where street ends and water begins. In America, this would be grounds for a thousand lawsuits.
The view from our window:


We were searching for this vegetarian restaurant, but unfortunately, I was looking at the wrong "fork" icon on our Lonely Planet map, and led us in the wrong direction. Fortunately, this led us to stumble on a tofu restaurant where we ate cold tofu, hot tofu, tofu skimmings, and tofu skewers. Zack was in heaven. I thought it was pretty good, too. As we left, Zack told the owner of the restaurant--who spoke pretty good English -- about how his dad used to make tofu in the '70's in Canada, and the owner freaked out and told us we must, must, must go visit the little shop where he buys his tofu. He gave us his card, and told us to be sure to tell the shopkeeper about Zack's dad. We plan to do this today.
Here's the wonderful tofu meal:


But first - the Imperial Palace. My father was right and we should have planned this trip earlier and got tickets online for the Imperial Palace and made a million phone calls to confirm it and not relaxed until after we had seen it. But alas, we did not. So we are going to head over there now and beg to be let in. Apparently, they only let you in with appointment. This is better than the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, which doesn't let you in at all. The guidebook doesn't seem to think it will be a problem to get tickets for the same day. We'll see.

Last night we walked through the Floating World, where we looked into the windows of wooden houses and saw women entertaining men. Are those geishas? We wondered. They looked like regular people, no face paint, nothing. But then we found out the answer when we saw a cab carrying two women with faces painted white, one of them adjusting her hair, the other on her cell phone. Geishas! Then we saw another geisha walking down the street and into the subway. They exist.

We stopped into an Irish pub, where the bartender was this guy from Liverpool who had moved here 25 years ago and spoke a pretty good Japanese. We were impressed to see this white guy chat it up with the locals. I asked him, "What's the deal with the geishas?" The deal, it turns out, is that there are two kinds - maikas and geishas - both have white faces. A maika aspires to have a man--usually married--sponsor her so that she can open her own geisha bar, and in return she must give the man "special favors." This is how the maika becomes a geisha. Maikas who are not yet geishas are simply entertainers--versed in art, poetry, music, and it is perfectly acceptable to marry a maika because they are not sexually obligated to their customers. But if some young salaryman does take a liking to a maika, she will of course have to leave the geisha world to marry the guy.

I also read about some lawsuit against the geisha world, and I'd be interested in reading more about that.

Now, off to the Imperial Palace.

now with video!!

yep, we figured out how to add some video.
so, keep an eye out for the google video thing, like the one of the sushi chefs.
We won't put them throughout, and make you re-read everything, though you should anyway, because the deepest insights only come after many re-re-readings.
R-e-a-d-i-n-g, find out what it means to me.

Hit the play button, and join us on a journey through time and space.
Or just some short, spastic clips of Tokyo.

Last train from Tokyo

We're on the Shinkansen now, the bullet train, on our way from Tokyo to Kyoto (same letters...coincidence? I don't think so.) It moves pretty fast.

We are definitely ready to leave Tokyo. It is a really busy place, with way too many shops and lights, and lots of people. Lots and lots of everything, really. We both had the thought that out of all the places we've been, some of us more places than others, Tokyo is one place that we wouldn't want to live.
I just don't feel like I would like it very much.

The place we stayed was really nice, in a cool little neighbourhood, and that was a good thing. I'm sure we could have stayed places that were in much more hectic areas.

I have to say that I'm pretty ready for some good ol' American food - whatever the hell that is. Seeing as how I don't eat fish (though Miriam does) or meat, there's not a heck of a lot to eat. Yes, yes, there is tofu in all it's glorious forms, but most places for the most part are fish and meat. Even this morning at Tokyo Station while waiting for the train, I wanted to get some pizza, and it all had meat.

So - what did we do yesterday...hm.
We woke up earlyish, as we've been doing, me a bit earlier than Miriam, and rode our bikes (big up to Miriam, because I didn't want to rent them but she pushed for it-best idea ever) to the Imperial Palace, hoping to ride through them. It was drizzling on and off, but it really didn't bother us at all. We finally found the palace and discovered that riding bikes in the gardens is not allowed, so we parked them and walked in. Again, after a pretty short time, I felt done there - it just didn't impress me in the ways that I had hoped. It seems that every thing we saw had been destroyed...if that makes any sense.

Here's a pic Miriam taking a picture of a Japanese couple:

And the Palace Moat:

After the Imperial Palace, we parked our bikes - not locking them to anything, just leaving them on the sidewalk with no fear of them being stolen, which is very very cool - at Otomachi Station and took a couple trains down to Akasaka, in search of a highly recommended sushi place. We're pretty sure we found it, and Miriam definitely loved the sushi. The chefs were very cool, greeting everyone who walked in the door with a loud "irassimase!!"



After lunch, and quick Subway sandwich stop - don't hate me, sushi places don't have much for a veg like me - we headed down to Shibuya to check out this huge store that Lonely Planet said we should see. They do seem to recommend a lot of shopping, I have to say. And their maps suck.

The store is Tokyu Hands, and it is 7 or 8 floors of absolutely everything you could ever want, or not want. Shibuya is an absolutely exhausting area of lights, noise, music, people and more of everything. I don't understand how the Japanese don't go freaking insane in these places.

Here's a tag on a bag we saw. Please feel free to make sense of it:

Oh yeah, I found out I'm a monster. My feet have been killing me from the shoes I brought, and so I went to try and get a new pair. I wanted a pretty standard pair of hiking shoes, lowtops, waterproof - you know the kind. We went into a bunch of different shops, some in the Sporting Good district - there's another funny thing; districts for very specific things - and was told that no store carries shoes in my massive size of 11. Everytime I would check out a pair of shoes, I would ask for my size (Eur 45, or 28.5CM) and would get a curious stare in return. Then a slow shaking of the head. I had hoped to find a novelty store or a clown supply place that maybe could accomodate me, but no luck. Or maybe display pieces for a shoe store, that would have some grotequely huge shoes, the ones that people stare at and say, "wow." I bet they would have been a perfect fit.

So, after Shibuya, we heading back to Otomachi, picked up the bikes and rode back to our ryokan in Asakusa. The bikes were returned (again, best idea ever!)
Us returning our bikes:

We napped for a while, and found a restaurant for dinner in the guidebook. We both were craving Italian, even though we had planned on hitting up some veggie place. We also wanted to end up in Shinjuku (that crazy hectic place in Lost in Translation) for drinks at some bar way up on top of a really tall building.) We found an Italian chain restaurant, Capricciosa's, or something like that, that was supposed to be "reliable" and headed down.

Shinjuku is very crazy. Even crazier than other places in Tokyo, if that's possible. Which it is, so just shut up.
The restaurant is in the basement of Zara, the clothing store. Which brings me to another crazy thing - bars and restaurants on high floors, and in basements of buildings. Just something not so common where we come from.

Boy this train is going fast. The mountains are really beautiful, too. Someone remind me to find out just how fast it goes, topspeed, etc. It's cool when it tilts going into turns.

We sat down to eat, and luckily sat next to a couple of English guys. You'll see why. We checked out the menu, and decided on what we wanted. Somehow we started talking to them, and one of them mentioned that on the back of the menu, it said what is in each dish, in case we were vegetarian. Well, it was only in Japanese, so he translated. It turned out that even the simple pastas we wanted were loaded with meats and fish (remember above about that?) and he helped us choose stuff to eat. The pasta turned out to be not bad, the wine was truly terrible, but the abundance of parmasan cheese helped everything along.

After dinner, we walked to the Keiyo Palace Hotel, and went to the Polestar Skybar, way up on the 45th floor. It was quite elegant, with chairs being pulled out, 50's haircuts on the staff, and Miriam being followed to the bathroom. Where they waited for her to come out, and escorted her back. Huh.
The drinks were expensive, but the view was ridiculous. My ears popped on the way down in the elevator.

A long subway ride home, crowded with people even late at night - though not too too late, cause the trains stop running at midnight, and back to the ryokan for the final night.

On the way home, we saw this door, in the middle of the train station. It goes to another dimension.


Got up this morning, packed, cab-ed it to the train station, and onto the Shikansen. Which is where are now.

Ah.

me and the wife

aren't we so cute?

the velvet train seats and Nikko

the second train we rode on for the final leg to Nikko had velvet seats. I mention this in order to make the pun in the title.
Thank you very much.

So we get into Nikko, a beautiful mountain town, and get our bearings and information from the tourist information booth. The bus takes us up to where the shrines and temples are, and we decline the awesome opportunity to pay a lot of money to walk over a bridge that's about 30 feet long. A missed opportunity, but one we'll get over. Hopefully.
As we're walking up these steps towards the shrine area, a short little man jumps out of nowhere, thrusting a map in our faces. His english is perfect, and we end up buying a map from him, because it has some great details on it. Or maybe he is just a good salesman.

We get up to the shrine area and see lots of different shrine buildings and rooms and stuff. I have to say that shrines and temples all seem relatively the same to me. Sacriligious maybe, but I have to say it. They are cool though, and pagodas are neat looking. Ok, I take it back, these places are cool. The various reliefs, paintings, gold statues, etc are pretty neat.

One cool thing at this shrine is that the famous "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys come from here.


Here's a couple pics of buildings on the temple grounds.



And this guy!



After we hit all the buildings, we managed to find this little Buddhist restaurant on the grounds of a nearby temple and proceeded to have the best meal yet. It was totally traditional, with lots of tofu prepared in different ways, small courses (about 8 of them) and green tea galore. All served by kimono wearing women who kneeled as they served us.
That could have been because they recognized us as foreign conquerors.
We ate at low tables, looking out at a gorgeous little garden.
very nice.

After lunch, we walked down little windy roads till we got back to town. We popped in and out of different little shops, walked off the main road a ways, and just looked around. We were very lucky to go into that guys shop - the woodworker - who loved dressing us up in his clothing. Hot.
He was super nice, giving us a sake cup, and spending a while with us teaching us words for all kinds of Japanese clothing. Good stuff.

We saw a very cool cemetary (Japanese, obvi) and walked through that. In front of all the tombstones there were offerings of different things, like mickey mouse cups and iced coffee, along with incense.

More on all of this later, cause I got to get going.

a post, in more detail

I think I didn't mention this, but it made quite an impression - the Indian place we ate at on Monday night had no idea what either chutney or raita was. Now you may not either, but you're not Indian. I was disturbed.

We woke up early on Tuesday morning, made the five minute walk to Asakusa Station, stopping along the way at various vending machines to find the perfect iced coffee and picking up some freshly made inari from a small stand. Mmmm.

Went through the usual somewhat-frustrating-but-not-too-bad experience of buying tickets and getting to the right place.

The train pulled up, looking like a train out of the future, which for us Americans, it unfortunately is. Before we could get on, a crew of yellow and blue clad worker drones swarmed the train, turning seats around, sweeping up trash, and literally making the train spotless, so it could make the trip back the other way. Pretty neat.



We get on the train, find our assigned seats and play with all the neat little features at the seats - fold out footrests that warn you to take your shoes off before using (those Japanese always got to get that in somewhere), a little table that comes out from the wall, windows that talk to you ("I am a window") - not really.

Tokyo is, as I've said before, freakin' massive, so a good half of the 2 hour train ride was spent just getting out of the city. Once in the countryside, it was very pretty. Lots of fields, farmers, and fields. Lots of fields in very vivid green colours. One thing I noticed was that there was much more electric wires running everywhere, power towers were a lot more visible, etc. Why did I notice this?

After most of the ride, we change trains somewhere, onto a much smaller local train for the 10 minute ride to Nikko.
Here's Nikko station.