Kyoto - a brief summary

Kyoto is probably rivaled by only a handful of places in this world, maybe Rome, Paris or Athens in terms of cultural and historical treasures. As the former capital of Japan for more than 1100 years, it is the place to go to meet Japan. It was also our first destination on our round the world trip, an introduction but also a test. I think it was a good start. We had a little over a week scheduled here. We spend 2 days on side trips to Himeji and Nara. We were lucky to find a very nice little house in the center of the city. The owner, Kazuya - a perfect host - let us check out at 8 pm, one extra day - the children spend it all in the house, but we got out to see some more. We broke the city in regions and covered it diligently. Several sites are in the centre of the city, but most of them are on the periphery, North and South, East and West.

Kyoto's population is a little over 1.5 million. It is part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoyo metropolitan area of almost 19 million people. From what I read, there is a challenge to balance the yearning for modernity and development with the desire to preserve the old way of life and the duty to protect all those cultural values. It is a huge city that somehow manages to maintain some feeling of small town. From every point on the large boulevards, you turn a corner and come to a small narrow street with little traditional houses. Kyoto is the site of 17 World Heritage Sites, 1600 temples, 400 shrines, the imperial palace and multiple other interesting things. We focused on unique sites and only the most important. So we don't forget, we saw the following: 

1. Himeji Castle
2. Higashi Hongan-ji
3. Nishi Hongan ji
4. Tō-ji (highest pagoda)
5. Tōfuku-ji
6. Fushimi-Inari-Taisha
7. Kiyomizu-dera
8. Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pagoda)
9. Hōnen-in
10. Shōren-in
11. Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pagoda)
12. Ryōan-ji
13. Tenryū-ji
14. Nara, Tōdai-ji (biggest wooden structure in the world)
15. Nara, Kōfuku-ji Pagoda (2nd highest)
16. Daitoku-ji
17. Kyoto Imperial Palace

Here is the proof:

Himeji Castle - the most beautiful Japanese Castle

Higashi Hongan-ji

Nishi Hongan ji

Tō-ji (highest pagoda)

Tōfuku-ji

Fushimi-Inari-Taisha

Kiyomizu-dera

Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pagoda)

Hōnen-in

Shōren-in

Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pagoda)

Ryōan-ji

Tenryū-ji

Nara, Tōdai-ji (biggest wooden structure in the world)

Nara, Kōfuku-ji Pagoda (2nd highest)

Daitoku-ji (a little statue hidden in a corner)

Kyoto Imperial Palace (the interior garden)

With more time, we would have visited a few more places, maybe Nijō-jō Castle, Chion-in, the Manga Museum, but we all agree that we did a pretty good job. They are all unique, different styles, different histories. Many of them are more recently reconstructed, maintaining the initial design, sometimes at smaller scales. These temples come with amazing gardens. We did not spend much time in the religious buildings, sometimes poorly illuminated, always with too little information in English. We got outside and visited the gardens. What a joy. We had amazing weather and we were here at the best time of the year. Maybe a week later we would have got more of the fall colors, but even so, we got a glimpse of the yellow and red starting to show.

While in Kyoto, I got word from Amazon that the book "Steve Jobs" is ready for me to download. I started to read the book and got to this quote from him: "The most sublime thing I've ever seen are the gardens around Kyoto". I read this paragraph several times. We just saw these! Next morning we went to Daitoku-ji, a world in itself, 24 sub-temples with numerous Zen gardens and saw some more.

This is not all we did in Kyoto, we saw the Jidai Matsuri Festival, the Kyoto Station, we visited a monthly traditional market, we wandered on the streets and loved the city. We would have wanted to experience more of the traditional Japanese culture, more of the food and maybe meet more people. Being our first destination we were careful not to overspend and tried to save money where we could. We ate home too many times and skipped meals, we walked long distances to save on the bus fare. We spent $400 for train and bus tickets, $450 for food and $325 for fun (temple tickets!).

As we were getting to the station to catch the overnight bus to Tokyo, we all agreed, we have too much luggage! Besides that, we had a great first experience, we function quite well as a team and we are ready to move on:

Tokyo, here we come.

Buddha's Nostril

Today we went to Nara. We bought tickets, we entered the station, found a conductor and asked him, through signs and Japanglish, which train should we take. I've learned Japanese once a week for three years almost twenty years ago and never practised since then. For the first days here I was almost lost. Beside thank you, good bye and excuse me everything seemed a long sound. After a week here I can recognize names of the stations and some other words that were long forgotten.

It is surreal traveling, being here, but separated. Everything is written in Japanese and in the important part something in English. It feels comfortable to find something that I can understand. Not being able to read eliberates me to observe. I may not know the semnification of the differences in the positions of Buddha, but I can see the people. They come looking around themselves, looking at the leaves that just start to turn reddish. At the water fountain they fill the cup with water and wash their left hand, and then the right one, and then they fill it for the third time to wash the handle, so the next person will have a clean cup to wash their troubles.

Nara

They walk and talk, buy their incense or their prayer that is written on a piece of wood tied with a red string. Or they write it on a piece of paper that they fold and tie it on a tree or a special stand.

Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Kyoto

At some temples they bow and as they say their wish they ring a bell, and throw some money in the big box, or they clap their hands, bow again and then continue their life. I like to see them in that moment of devotion.

I have to remind ourselves that these lovely gardens and pavilions are temples.

Kyoto- Golden Pavilion

 A week ago I was in JFK thirsting for a tree, even a fake one, or for some form of vegetation, and now I'm surrounded by little hills with streams that gather in ponds with colored fish. In the begginings the Japanese were animists and even when they adopted Buddhism they still believed in spirits in every form of life. They work every day to transform nature; they prune the fir trees needle by needle, make hedges from camelias. They sweep the leaves that have fallen during the night (imagine a leaf-blower in a temple).

But beyond words and language, we are here for the same reason: to admire... nature, patience, work, people, imagination, vision.

The largest wood building contains a seated Buddha. He sits on a lotus flower and every petal is inscribed with the same story of how things are inter-related and they affect each other in thousands ways.

 Behind Buddha there is a single tree column (as there are the others in the temple) and at its base is a hole the same dimensions as Buddha’s nostril. There was a long line of school children waiting to go through and our children joined them. It is said that if you manage to get through, you will reach enlightenment.

Our Days, Besides Traveling

The hardest part about traveling around the world is not the jet lag or the walking 5 miles a day or seeing Japanese temples over and over (most of them similar enough to be boring to those of us who are not fascinated by temples): it's being stuck with four other people, most of whom have wildly different ideas of what is interesting or not, what makes good music, how one should spend leisure time, etc.

So far, the basic idea has been the same: sleep on the wonderful tatami mats until whenever I wake up (6-7am), and then migrate downstairs to sit and read NaNoWriMo posts or plan the NaNoWriMo novel to save as much time as possible during November. Dad is usually awake at this time, either reading blogs or studying today's activities or reading the new Steve Jobs book that is out.

When everyone is downstairs, in the living/ dining room, and we've just settled down into the 'zone,' we realize that we should eat breakfast, and everything is swept up off the table for a breakfast of bread or packaged croissants, with large amounts of butter slathered on top, and a beverage: tea, coffee, milk, or orange juice are our current preferences (in order: Mom, Dad, Ioan/Ileana, Maria).

When breakfast is over, there is a hectic period in which children try to get back into the 'zone' and parents try to get as far away from the house as possible. We children are still not sure why adults exhibit this phenomenon.

Once we are on the street, walking towards our destination, we settle into a normal pace of walking— these paces may differ between people, so that someone is quite behind (either taking pictures or absorbing the scenery of red buckets and interesting sidewalk cracks) and someone is quite ahead.

At the stoplights, we generally group again for the next stretch of sidewalk. While this method of walking may seem wonderful, we have to work on it: not all countries are as 'civilized' as Japan, and we have to get used to walking in a close group for those 'uncivilized' countries where you can't leave your backpack alone for half a second.

Everyone else has already explained about the amazing destinations we have seen so far (my favorites are the gardens and roadside stands that offer free sweet tastings), so I'll pass over that— suffice it to say that whenever there is a long stretch of stairs or we stop to catch a breather/figure out where we're going, I'll run ahead and then sit down to read something on the iPod Touch. I've managed to read 2 books so far using this method. (Or the equivalent: I also used the time to plan the novel.)

When we get home, it's usually with 8 to 19,000 steps under our belts: the equivalent of 4 to 9.5 miles. By the time we get back, I anticipate terrible abdominal/upper body strength and legs of steel.

Once we get home, everyone either finds an electrical leisure item (read laptop, iPod Touch, iPad, Kindle, or nook), and begins writing, reading, or watching various things. This is our leisure time, we all seem to say, it is sacred.

Dinner tends to be rice (cooked in a wonderful invention dubbed rice cooker) and noodles with pork and something green. For dessert (which seems to be a welcome development of travel), ice cream or yatsuhashi— a Japanese sweet made of rice flour, shaped like a triangle, and stuffed with chestnut purée, sweet bean paste, chocolate, strawberry, banana (and the list goes ON…) or other delicious fillings. They're not sweet like American candy— rather, their taste is subtle— just sweet enough to satisfy the taste buds, but not sweet enough to make you want to eat something salty.

After dinner, we either take a bath or migrate back to the 'zone.'

Baths in Japan are something that should have pervaded the rest of the world. To the right of the entrance there is the toilet with a warmed toilet seat that, when flushed, turns on a sink that simultaneously fills the water basin and can be used to wash hands. While this isn't prevalent in all of Japan, it should be— super space-saver!

To the left there is the shower/bath. It is a folding door with insulation to make sure that no water escapes. As you go in, there is a small bench to the right, with a mirror and body wash, shampoo, and conditioner. There is also a small stool, usually on the floor. Just in front is the very deep bath tub. You turn on the bath tub so that it automatically fills itself to 80% with water of 113°F /45°C. As the bath tub is filling, you use the small shower head to wash— all soapy activity is done OUTSIDE the tub. I THINK you sit on the stool, but I'm not sure. Once you're all rinsed, you get into the tub and RELAX.

I tried to do this. It all worked fine up until I got in the tub. After less than five minutes of relaxation in the tub, I got bored. I'm sure this is a very rare problem, however— especially for those over 18.

After a bath, we'll all migrate upstairs— except for Dad, who has to sleep in the living room— he simply goes and gets his tatami mat and moves the table and then sleeps on the heated carpet.

The tatami mats are ridiculously comfortable— there are two (maybe three? layers— one hard(ish) one, and another sort of mattress. There is also a very downy comforter that is light as air and very warming. The pillow is small and dense. In short… paradise!

Once a Week: Blogging Japan

Blogging my thoughts here once a week. Currently, we are in Kyoto, Japan, and tomorrow we leave for Tokyo.


First thought:
I really, really don't want to do this. Why do I have to blog? I hate doing productive things. Why can't I just sleep and be lazy? Why did I have this terrible idea of going around the world? Why couldn't I have just let Mom and Dad do this for their retirement years? Why—


Why am I listening to this? What is this? Is this pop, or techno? No, it's not techno. Is this dance? What am I listening to?! WHY AM I LISTENING TO IT?!! Oh, it's called "Never be Alone", and yes, yes it is dance music.


Obviously this trip is a bad idea if I, the unswayable rock fan is listening to this stuff: http://www.wix.com/gabrieltapuc/modern-music-hits#!my-songs


It's actually kinda catchy....


Okay, you've seen the inside of my head and concluded there's nothing there. Moving on.


What exactly are you supposed to do when you blog...?


So, basically, as you'll have read from my parents' blogs, we've seen various temples, a few gardens, and Himeji castle. And another castle, but I've never really been good with names or important details like that. I remember one temple! It was dedicated to Inari, the god of rice and sake and merchants. Also, it was dedicated to foxes.


Oh, we've also seen a few pagodas and rock gardens. But I think the last one counts as just "gardens". I don't know about you, but I think of plants when I think "gardens".


I think I'm just going to tell you about our average day in Kyoto: we wake up, Maria and Dad are downstairs on their computers. I do... whatever it is I do. If I can, I try to use a computer. Lately, I've been working on my NaNoWriMo novel (will be explained in further detail later), which is a shock. As I've mentioned before, I... ah... dislike... *coughhatecough* doing productive things. Because we only have 2 computers, I don't always end up with one of them. One is Maria's, and she shares it with Ioan. The other is my mother's, which means I never get it. Because it's Mom's, and what's hers is Dad's (and vice versa), her computer is in constant use, and the worst part is, it's being used for something important, so my NaNoWriMo novel has to be worked on either in my head, on my iTouch, or on paper.


On an unrelated note, notice that before, when you first saw me change from the Courier font to Times, the latter seemed super-thin, while now it looks relatively normal-sized. Back to relevant things:


NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It takes place in November every year, and was discovered by Maria in 2007. However, she forgot about it, so 2008 is her first year as a NaNoWriter. Basically, what you do is you write 50,000 words in 30 days. You can write more if you want, but if you write less, then you "lose" (nothing happens if you lose). If you reach the word goal, then YAY! YOU WIN (nothing happens if you win)! If you write 50,000 words, but you started before November, then the guilt monkeys will get you (nothing happens if the guilt monkeys get you).


As I was saying before, morning program. Maria and Dad are downstairs on their computers, I'll come and do my Facebook, deviantArt, eMail, YouTube, edit pictures, etc. If she hasn't come down already, then Mom comes down. Last to come is Ioan. Then Mom gets breakfast ready, and when it is, we eat. After eating, we figure out what's going on for the day. Where we're going, how long we're going, and all that. Later, we're going to ask the same questions, but it doesn't hurt to have at least a vague idea of what's going on.


When we get ready to go, we fill our water bottles, check our day packs, put on our Scott Vests, put on our shoes and go outside, where Mom sprays our arms with bugspray. This is unhelpful, as the bugs just bite our legs instead. Then we go on our way to whichever temple we're visiting that day.


On the way: Maria and Ioan goof off and do I-don't-exactly-know-what-because-1.-I-am-not-invited-2.-I-do-not-want-to-be-invited-because-it's-annoying-me. Mom and Dad walk and then...discuss...which way to take. This involves asking, "Which way? Left? Okay, let's go left." Then we kids go left and the parents turn right. We then hear, "Why are you going that way? We just said, 'No, wait, to the right!'" This results in many mutinous glances and dark mutterings. Other scenarios include but are not limited to: stopping and consulting various maps for extended periods of time, going ridiculously slow, going ridiculously fast, and getting lost. I'm sure we'll look back on these times and laugh. After many years. Probably while drunk.


Eventually we'll reach a bus stop, hop on a bus, and stay for varying amounts of stations. During this time, I will be listening to my iPod. There are at least 1,200 songs on my iPod, and yet I only listen to the same ones. This is probably around 50 at a time. The reasons for the other 1,150 is because I totally used to love Natasha Bedingfield, or I loved Lady GaGa last week! What if, when I'm done with this Trapt phase, I'll want to listen to her again, but can't because I took her music off? Thus the useless music accumulates.


(You may have a lovely suggestion for my problem: Sync more often. This is the part where I die laughing, and my last words are "Yeah. Right.")


However, I have lovely playlists. Comment if you want to see what I like other than Lady GaGa.


After we get off the bus, we do a lot of walking and eventually reach the first temple for today. There we will walk around, admire the architecture and the Buddhas, and do a lot of sitting. The reason for all the sitting is because Mom and Dad will have more "discussions" on which way to take. Mom will want to go this way, Dad will want to go that way, and standing up while this is going on will be regretted later. We usually just sit down while they go in one direction, say, "Why aren't you happy? I let you win! Okay, you want me to win? Then let's go my way!" They then proceed in that direction while the current "winner" says, "No! I feel terrible now! Let's go your way!" After 5 to 10 minutes, they'll decide on a direction, and I get to tell Maria and Ioan to get off their iTouches and start walking.


After the first temple, we proceed to the next. We then do more walking, admiring, and sitting. Return to step one and repeat.


Of course, at this point, you're wondering, "And you don't eat?!!" Of course we eat. If I wasn't here, we wouldn't eat at all. It'll be 1.30 and I'll start asking "When do we eat? After this we eat? Are we eating now? Why won't we eeeeeaaaat?" Dad maintains the opinion he doesn't need to eat. Maria is the same. Mom can wait until dinner. Ioan used to join in, but he betrayed me by learning to deal with the hunger pangs. This may or may not have been due to the fact that I, unlike him, have learned that ice cream is not critical to our continued existence.


Eventually we find a restaurant and eat, and afterwards, Dad complains about how much money was spent on food. Later, when we reach the next temple and he has to pay for the entrance tickets, I try not to complain of how much food we could've bought with the money spent on said tickets.


After we've finished with all the walking and all the temples, we manage to convince our parents to bring us back home, where we go to the computers and solve various things. We have dinner, discuss tomorrow or other things, and basically enjoy ourselves.

Impressions

 Kon nichi wa!

In the last few days we visited Kyoto on foot, visiting temples and shrines.

 

We also walked through the Imperial Palace Garden. There are so many things that are different from what we know.

The bus is, like most cars here, very low and narrow. The driver first opens the front door for the passengers to pay and get out. Then he opens the back door for people to get in. The bus station has electronic information to let you know when your bus is coming.


The big streets have sidewalks, the little ones only have a markup. The crossings have sonar signals, initially very annoying, but then we got used to it and came to rely on it. We saw a couple of diagonal crossings.

Most of the times people won't cross the street on red, even when the street is empty. To get out of the parking building they have a light and sound signal and one or two people with little flags to stop the pedestrian traffic. The paid parking has a system of blocking the back wheel, like a raised plate.

In front of the different buildings you can see some plates in the side-walk. You can un-screw and raise them to delimit a space or block the traffic.

There are many bicycles. On the sidewalk there is a special line for them, but they are allowed to go on the pedestrian side too! On the bicycles you can see baskets, seats for children or infants(some have both, with rain covers and all)

Parking for bicycles is on two levels, like for the cars. They have a system of blocking the back wheel like a ring, that is controled with a key. When we rented the bicycles in Himeji I found out that they have an escalator just for them, so you don't have to push them up-hill.

There are people of all ages at all the times on streets. I've seen a crowd only at at the one-day, sell-everything market and at the temples. They wear west style clothes or kimonos. The young ones look like they climbed out of a manga page.

The houses have their typical aspect even when they are modernized. Every space and nook is used with efficiency, a little garden in 5 square inches. Every house has on the sidewalk one or two red buckets with water in case of fire. In between houses there are restaurants  and little stores.

The food: we tasted different things that were offered: pickled vegetables, sweets. We tried ramen, udon(very thick spagetti, different consistency) soba (like angel hair spaghetti that you dunk in the sauce) donuts with meat. From the travel guides I understood that there are some places where they have a line outside, the food is that good, but we didn't come across them, or maybe it was the wrong hour. We haven't tried sushi and sashimi yet.

The restrooms are either very simple or very beautiful. At one of the temples we saw a toillet with a seat with sounds and washing, but I liked best the sink with water, soap and dryer in the same bowl.

To be continued in a future post.

Best Day Ever

I wake up at 4 am and for a while I lie in bed imagining that I write about all that I hate about Japan. I cannot really find much, we've been here for a few days, still trying to adjust to the jet lag.

We arrived well, the 14 hours plane ride wasn't bad at all. The plane was to continue it's flight to Taipei, we were just a handful of people to disembark in Osaka. Siberia was awesome, I remember flying over Greenland in '96, it looked so gorgeous. Then flying over it a dozen more times, nothing but clouds. Seeing the ground, the immense expanse of snow and ice, magnificent. Very likely we'll never see it like that again. At immigration they were waiting for us, each one with it's own agent. The airport is fantastic, but we really didn't have time to explore it. The first challenge, finding an ATM that works with American cards. Then getting the train pass, finding the train, finding our host. The Kansai rail pass is a one time only choice for visitors to Japan, we chose to get it for two days in order to save one hundred dollars, and this means that on our second day, jet lag or not, we take a day trip to Himeji Castle.  It was a great introduction, the best and greatest castle in Japan, a nice garden that we visited right after that, free bikes in the city of Himeji, first experience trying to get food, first restaurant - just for the five of us and the cook.

Himeji Castle

Koko-en Garden with Himeji Castle

On the second day we start by trying to lay down a plan. It turns out that nobody knows much about Kyoto, the children have no idea why we are here and we have no plans for the next few days. Usually Mom takes care of this, sometimes I prepare something about our destination. I did prepare almost everything about our round the world trip, but not much about the individual destinations. Putting the house on hold - and taking care of about a million other things before we left - didn't leave much time for learning about Kyoto. Part of the reason for choosing Kyoto first has to do with choosing Japan first, the most expensive destination, very limited time, moving fast from one thing to another. Every day counts, we can rest in places were we can live with $50 per day, not with $400. So it's our first day in Kyoto, second day of Japan, and no idea of what to do. The books we got actually made things more complicated. There are 17 World Heritage sites in this city alone. There are two in Romania. There are several thousands shrines and temples and many other things to do. Without plan and with the impression that we actually have some extra time to spend and we deserve a free day, we start walking down the street, changing our destination every few minutes. We ended up in the garden of the imperial palace, after a couple of hours of wandering. We had a picnic on a bench, we visited some exhibition, a section with a little lake, we eventually get to the palace to find out that the next tour is tomorrow at 10 am. Two tours per day, we were there, but we missed it. After a somewhat disappointing day, it becomes clear that my family would rather have me do the planning, learning about what we have to see and organizing it by days, maybe even hours.

As I was saying, I am lying in bed at 4 am, I had too much sleep to have any chance of falling back to sleep, earlier Ileana was on the stairs, waiting to get to the bathroom because she was “a little sick.” I had to work so much to get here, they could have prepared something about Kyoto. I cannot use a computer, because my family is on them all the time, my wife suddenly rediscovered her love for photography and she wants to learn Aperture, a special program on handling the files and processing photos digitally. I cannot take pictures, I cannot use the computer.  There is too little time to answer all the messages that we got from our friends, keep the Facebook page updated, finish the financial aspects of our previous existence, cleaning up the backup hard drive and moving all our computer life on the road. I hate that I have to write, I don't know how to write, I cannot take this imaginary reader off my mind, what would she think of what I say. I carry out a conversation with her in my head, but this doesn't help. It doesn't help. Maybe I should just blog like everybody else. Travel is great and all these places are fantastic and food is awesome and people are amazing. On top of this, we are in Japan, they use different words for numbers depending on the type of object they are counting, they use three different alphabets, we have no idea of what we eat, everything is upside down, everything is horrible. Even at 4 am trying to identify all the negatives, there is too much excitement and I run out of subjects to complain about. Last night, I started to learn about Kyoto, I actually knew enough that I only need to put things in order and find some organization. I will throw out the stupid book about walks in Kyoto (cannot really, it's on the Kindle, just delete), when I have time I will write a one star review on Amazon. Back to Lonely Planet and Insight Guides, back to the App store, buy an application about Kyoto that I install on the children's iTouches, a piece of paper to divide the six days we have left here. At 7 am everybody is up and ready to start the new day. We leave at 8.30 am, a little late, but it's OK. We have a plan. Ten hours later, after visiting a quarter of Kyoto, I truly think this was the best day ever. Ever.

We start with the Higashi Hongan-Ji, followed by Nishi Hongan-Ji, two magnificent temples of competing branches of buddhism. At Nishi, we have a special introduction from one of the priests. This is a special year for them, 750 years since the death of their founder. He explained and we understood a bit. Then, as we are getting hungry we make it to the Kōbō-San Market, once a month on the 21st. We love the market, we eat a lot of different things.

Takoyaki

I find out that the first thing that I had in Japan was takoyaki, no wonder that I didn't like it. Now that I see what is made of (some fried dough shell with a piece of raw octopus and some sort of coleslaw), I decide that I have no excuse not to like it. We keep trying various other things, working our way between the stands, a line of monks passes by going to the service, we follow them and end up in the cemetery, people are praying to statues of turtles, amazing. In the back there is a five stories pagoda, the tallest in Japan. We pay the entrance fee but the pagoda is closed - we can visit the next two buildings, all part of the Tō-ji temple. It is now 2 pm, maybe we should go home, the kids are ready. Ileana inquires about visiting the Fushimi-Inari temple, she read about it and I couldn't fit it in the program that I made so far. We check the map, figure out a bus to take, bribe the children with some icecream. We end up on some back roads, another huge temple. “this is it?”, “no, it cannot be this one”. It turns out that we are in the yard of Tōfuku-ji temple.

Tōfuku-ji temple

We don't pay admission but we are able to wander for a bit on the premises, another set of magnificent constructions. We finally make it to Fushimi-Inari-Taisha. We are exhausted but this thing is unbelievable. We get a second wind, start going in the orange tunnels, up the mountain, it never ends. Interspersed here and there, little shrines, old graves, constructions, foxes, lions and other animals guarding one thousand year old graves up and up and up the mountain. Supposedly the whole circuit is four kilometers, we choose a shorter path but the maps are just sketches in Japanese, we go and go, soaking wet, the kids start running up the mountain, they jump and laugh and enjoy it, even if occasionally they complain about this father who could only find a path up not down the mountain.

Fushimi-Inari-Taisha

We decide at station three that we had enough, we are now almost on top of the mountain, Inari-san. The whole of Kyoto lies at our feet. Breathtaking. Coming down, we find an alternate path, we then realize that we followed all along the path that we chose in the first place, but a kilometer, especially up the mountain, is pretty long. All this trip among these old graves and shrines, a totally different world, grey and orange all over and on the last meters, a lot of cats on the graves or in the middle of the road. The last few steps we pass a little pond; people are feeding turtles and the huge carp jumps over to steal their food. After a couple of hours here, I realize that this is the best day ever.

We take the bus toward home, get booted off at the Kyoto station, we are too exhausted to walk the next mile home so we vote, four to one, to find some ramen here. We get to the tenth floor and find a place to eat, pick something based on prices and pictures and have a great dinner. The waiter told us what we had, we cannot really understand and we forget a minute later. But you know what, this food is great. Another couple of hours later I fall asleep while playing chess with my son.They had to make the bed under me, I couldn't really help, I was so asleep.

Next day, Saturday, long ago planned, they have two festivals, Jidai Matsuri in the morning and Kurama Fire Festival later at night. It rains, I wake up at 3.30 am. No way to get back to sleep. I clean up emails and financial documents, slowly finishing things up, it will be so good when I will be able to put all this to sleep for a year or so.

I learned to use Twitter today. I had this account for a couple of years, I even posted 56 tweets so far, but this morning I decided to search for “Jidai Matsuri” and found out in a moment that it was rescheduled for tomorrow. Wow, twitter can actually help!

Kiyomizu-dera

When Ileana woke up, we made an alternate plan, we visited Kiyomizu-dera, another unique, fantastic temple, another World Heritage site. We spend more time slowly walking on some streets in Southern Higashiyama. We eat at a restaurant that has English menus, we finally know what we have. We have dessert handed to us by tens of salesmen who invite us to check their products. We decide to return home. The weather is very hot and humid after the rain from this morning, but the sky is still very dark.

I want to go tonight to the fire festival - the trip might be two hours by bus and train, my daughter Ileana and my son want to come. It's optional, Mom would probably decide to come at the last moment. I am still working on convincing Maria. We are at home at 3 pm and shortly after the rain starts. This is no joke, we cannot be outside in this weather, we'll just stay home. The festival continues even in the rain, but it will have to be without us. We talk, we stay at home. We love our little house. Ileana and the children sleep upstairs, I sleep downstairs, there is not enough room for choices. It would probably fit in our kitchen, but it's great and Maria wants to have a house just like this when she grows up.

Higashiyama

At every step I marvel at something. Every person, every cloth, every house, car, road is so different. I love their temples, even if I don't understand much. Cabs have lace on their chairs! The traffic signals beep incessantly, but they stop when we get used to it and come to expect it. The public toilet beeps to say hello. I love the stupid fashion of these teenagers, they make it look so natural, if they find it beautiful then so do I. By my taste, women dress awfully, but after two days I start to like it. They would be fired or taken to the asylum in USA, but they actually seem to feel comfortable and pretty.

Of everything here, I cannot have enough, I would want to take a picture every second, but I don't have the camera and Ileana is much more selective. I don't want to ask for the camera, after all, I have two others in my pocket and last night I discovered that we have 15 cameras with us. But pictures wouldn't help. I just cannot have enough. I love everything about Japan, I already know it will not be enough. It cannot be enough. I love Japan.