WAY OUT WEST IN FUKUOKA

Actually we began the day in Hiroshima and didn't arrive here in Fukuoka until 5:00 p.m. - just in time to meet Ted's cousin Greg and the rest of the gang for dinner, desert and a stroll around a city much more cosmopolitan, lively and sophisticated than Lee recalls from prior visits.  

Here's what our initial visual impressions provided as we had some of the best ramen noodles in Japan, snarfed up some yummy deserts at Cafe Otto overlooking Canal City and walked along the river drinking in the sights (and some newly blossoming cherry blossoms).  By the end of the day, Sean had adapted fully to the Japanese lifestyle as attested to by his yukata sleeping attire:

Earlier in the day, Ted and I were both impressed by the sustained interest Sean took in all the exhibits at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.  We spent nearly two hours in the museum itself plus another thirty minutes or so visiting the other monuments in Peace Memorial Park.  He was clearly absorbed in the entire experience and hopefully emerged from it as changed a young man as one might hope.

We spent the early afternoon on nearby Miyajima admiring the famous red torii, catching glimpses of two wedding couples and climbing up the stairs at Daishoin to visit the hidden room full of flickering lanterns. 
 

Lee didn't make the latter climb -- too many steps, not enough stamina -- but did spend his time profitably snapping images of various jizo images scattered about the temple entrance gate ... great fun!

Back in Hiroshima, we hopped a (delayed!) shinkansen, debarking at Hakata (Fukuoka)-- and walking right into the future!

More tomorrow on what the future holds.

BEYOND SURPRISED

The reason most travelers visit Himeji is to visit Himeji Castle, a World Heritage Site and one of Japan's most beautiful (and beautifully preserved) seventeenth century castles.  Imagine Lee's surprise, then, when -- having arrived in Himeji by shinkansen from Kyoto -- he looked down the street and saw that the entire main turret was encased in cloth!

Clearly, the computer-generated black-and-white image just wouldn't do as a substitute for "the real thing" we had come all this way to see.


Interestingly, however, it did "do" and quite nicely at that.


We still were able to visit and appreciate aspects of the castle not under restoration.  The outer walls and numerous smaller structures were still intact; many had recently been repainted.
 

To keep visitors coming, a room that had not been seen by the public since castle construction was completed in the sixteen hundreds was also open for public viewing and housed a collection of recently uncovered artifacts and a nicely-lit selection from the castle's collection of traditional Japanese armor.

The best feature, however, was the completely new structure incorporated into the restoration process (which won't be completed until 2015) of an external elevator and viewing platform allowing visitors to view the restoration process "up close and personal"!  A glass window looks out at the work in progress as one assends in the elevator; and, from the viewing level, one can look out over the city without having to climb six flights of ladder-like stairs as usually has been the case in the past.  

There's lots of explanatory material on display as well, explaining the process behind the roof replacement and the re-plastering of the exterior.  

Sean, Ted and Lee all found the entire experience a real highlight of the entire trip to date.

After spending nearly three hours at the castle(!), we ate a quick lunch (local specialties, including squid and octopus), then caught a second shinkansen for the one hour trip further south to Hiroshima where (after a brief hassle over an erroneous reservation) we settled into two (rather than one) rooms at the ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel Hiroshima for our one night stay.


The hotel is almost adjacent to Peace Park (which we'll visit tomorrow) and within easy walking distance of the okonomiyaki restaurant palace Lee discovered when last in Hiroshima with Friends of Lee in 2007.  We ate there again this evening, then added desert at a nearby Starbucks.  

What surprises Lee most about Hiroshima 2012 is how transformed it seems from just four years ago -- the place is strikingly up-to-date and sophisticated, so much so that Ted wondered if the atomic bombing had done any damage at all!

THE MORNING AFTER

[Lee usually manages to post these entries BEFORE hitting the futon after each days adventures.  However yesterday (Thursday) a brief "lay down" led to several hours of blissful snoozing and left this summary until this morning.]


Nara, Japan's first permanent capital (710 - 784), lies only about an hour by train from Kyoto.  Our trip to visit some of its historic attractions there, however, began with a brief stop at Fushimi Inari Taisha, a Shinto shrine on the outskirts of Kyoto itself.  The shrine is famous throughout Japan for its efficacy in responding favorably to prayers for commercial economic success.  Once requests for aid and support have been answered, the petitioner erects a torii (shrine entrance gate) to acknowledge the divine support received.  The result is a riot of color along pathways that extend all over the mountainside behind the shrine itself.

Our second stop of the day was at Todaiji, a World Heritage site, an eighth century Buddhist temple and the largest wooden building in the world.  But first we stopped in a nearby arcade for lunch at a local Nara McDonald's (just to say we'd eaten there, don't you know...)

During our temple visit, Sean completed his only real assignment for the entire Japan trip: he successfully crawled through a hole in a pillar located at the rear of the temple building.  Doing so (the hole is the size nostril on the temple's image of the Buddha) guarantees good luck and prosperity throughout one's life.  Sean thus extends the completion of this task into the third generation - Lee accomplished the feat fifty years ago; Heidi, Alissa, Evan and Jon all did as well during their various visits to Japan.  A cool tradition thus extended itself into the twenty-first century!

Sean, Ted and Lee then strolled up to Kasuga Jinja, the Shinto shrine honoring the titular deity of the powerful aristocratic Fujiwara family.  The shrine, also a World Heritage site, is well known for its stone and hanging bronze lanterns.

The Fujiwara family also had a pleasure pavilion built in the eleventh century within the confines of their residential compound in nearby Uji, a town renown for its green tea plantations.  So, once we left Nara behind, we stopped off to visit Byodoin in Uji, the original pavilion having been transformed later in the eleventh century into an architectural evocation of the Buddhist Western Paradise.   The building also appears today on the Japanese ten yen coin.

All this running around was accomplished by train and on foot (although we did hop a taxi at the end of our time in Nara), a first for Lee who usually moves from place to place on this itinerary by comfy tour bus.  No wonder fatigue set in with such a vengeance!

We ended the evening at Pronto (for Italian pasta) and Mister Donuts before stopping in to pick up a 4 gig SD memory card for Sean's camera.  The Big Camera emporium where we shopped quite blew Ted's mind, yet another overwhelming illustration of the Japanese quest for "endless choice" gone mad!

RE-IMAGINING KYOTO

It suddenly occurred to Lee that many of the places discussed in this series of blog posts are unfamiliar to some of our readers.  So, before we head off to Nara this morning, he has looked back through Ted's images and picked out some of the more iconic to give everyone a glimpse of what these places actually "look" like.  Here's a labeled visual catalog,then,  of many of those places where we've spent our last three days in Kyoto.  Enjoy!

KYOTO TRAIN STATION

SANJUSANGENDO (TEMPLE OF ONE THOUSAND AND ONE BUDDHAS)

KIYOMIZUDERA (PURE WATER TEMPLE)

SANNENZAKA (TRADITIONAL SHOPPING STREET)

NIJO CASTLE

NIJO CASTLE GARDEN

KINKAKUJI (THE TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN PAVILION)

RYOANJI (ZEN TEMPLE ROCK GARDEN AND POND)

OHARA (RURAL AREA OUTSIDE KYOTO)

JAKKO IN (BUDDHIST TEMPLE RETREAT)

SANZENIN (BUDDHIST TEMPLE GARDEN AND WORSHIP HALL)

VARIABLE WEATHER, BUT A BRILLIANT DAY FOR A WALK

Some things around here change ever so quickly and catch the unwary completely off guard.  This morning Lee, Sean and Ted set off for a country walk but seemingly arrived at the bus stop just a moment too late to catch our ride out to Ohara -- a number 17 bus pulled away just as we approached the departure point.  The nearby schedule indicated another wouldn't appear for another thirty minutes.  Bummer!


We waited patiently, but the scheduled bus never appeared.  Finally, fifty minutes of waiting later, a bus pulled up -- but the driver indicated we needed to be waiting in a completely different place, across the road and down the block!


Turns out that Lee hadn't taken a local bus out to Ohara since the Sanjo Keihan bus terminal (which he remembers as a cavernous lot full of an exhaust-spewing bus fleet) had been replaced by a set of restaurants and a car park.  In the process the bus stop map naturally had changed -- but the "new" one indicated the stopping point only for the buses headed downtown, not those running into the countryside.


We did finally manage to find the right stop, but that didn't end the surprises.  Lee wanted Sean and Ted to see, among other sights, a huge pine in the (groomed) shape of Mt. Fuji just down the road from Sanzenin, our second objective for the day -- but, that huge pine, too, had disappeared!


Jakko In, our first stop, a small Buddhist temple retreat that once housed an exiled empress who had taken vows as a nun, also was altered beyond recognition.  The temple had burned to the ground in May of 2000.  Its rebuilding had taken until 2006, but the original Buddhist image couldn't be reclaimed.  The replacement was carved as a faithful representation of the original but too brightly painted to capture the aura of the original.  Likewise only a fraction of the thousand miniature images of the Buddha once displayed behind the larger icon had been replaced.  In time, the patina of age will return and the image collection recreated, but right now only the beautiful garden holds attention.

And that, too, has changed -- a thousand year old tree at its center suffered severe damage in the fire and eventually died, only its trunk remaining as a (deified) reminder of what once was there.


Still and all, it was a great way to spend a leisurely day outside, despite the occasional shower, one allowing us all to polish our photographic skills while still catching our collective breath just a bit.  

An extended gallery of our results can be found below.  The initial collage is from Ted; the next two are the work of both Sean and Ted; the following six individual images are Sean's; and the final collage comes from Lee's still independent-minded camera.  Enjoy!

And here's another of Ted's image sets, capturing our first encounter with dango (pounded rice balls drenched in miso soy sauce), a great -- if sticky -- mid-afternoon snack:

WISHES GRANTED

Ted's cousin Greg, his wife Yoko and mother Theresa joined us today for our visits (via subway and taxi) to Nijo Castle and Kinkakuji's Golden Pavillion.  We shared an elegant lunch with them as well at Inobe Coffee's main cafe, home of one of Kyoto's finest coffee breweries.  

Getting there -- to the Inobe Coffee cafe -- proved particularly interesting in that we had planned to dine at Owara Coffee but both our taxi drivers took us to Inobe instead (a compromise settled upon by cellphone while enroute) -- we're all convinced it was part of a taxi driver conspiracy of some dark and sinister nature.  

The substitution, however, proved more than acceptable, so we didn't complain much, just laughed a lot instead.  Ted will undoubtedly work the entire experience into his next novel, somehow or other ...


Later in the afternoon, on our own once again, we three meditated a moment or two at the famous Zen stone garden at Ryoanji before retiring to a French cafe for a late day snack.  Lee stayed on, catching up on a bit of reading, while "the boys" wandered through the shopping arcade for an hour or so in search of the perfect gifts and souvenirs.


The big disappointment of an otherwise delightful day (warm, sunny and pleasant, just as ordered!) came with the discovery that Omen, Lee's absolutely most favorite Kyoto restaurant, had closed its doors at the branch with which he is most familiar.  We didn't starve, however, substituting for our initial destination a teishoku (full set dinner) at Ganko Sushi, a well-known chain on Sanjo-dori near the Kamogawa river bridge.

As these images attest, Ted continues to document our every move (and meal).  Meanwhile Sean has taken to digital image making of the highest order -- some of his shots today are quite stunning, exhibiting a great eye for detail and framing shots quite successfully.  Greg, too, joined in the picture taking fun as did Lee, the latter still unable to keep his finger off his camera's shutter button.

In the end, this should prove to be one of the best documented travel adventures ever!

BUSY AND BUSHED

Sean, Ted and Lee had a hearty buffet breakfast in Hineno early this morning, then headed out by train for a two hour ride to Kyoto via downtown Osaka, arriving in time to spend a couple of hours wandering around Kyoto Station, The Cube and Isetan Department Store before settling in for an okonomiyaki (grilled noodles with all kinds of extras mixed in, served on an iron skillet) lunch.

Having ditched our luggage at the baggage storage center in the train station, we hopped a city bus for the short ride to Sanjusangendo, the famed Kyoto temple containing a thousand and one golden statues of Amida, the Buddha of Compassion.  

Our second visit of the afternoon took us by taxi to Kiyomizudera, the "Pure Water Temple", where we were able (despite the ongoing reconstruction project which has placed significant parts of the complex "off limits" until well into the middle of the current decade) the significant structures in the complex and a lovely (if chilly) view of the entire heavily urbanized valley below.


Our touring day ended with a leisurely walk along the base of the Eastern Hills, where we trod pedestrian-only streets long considered by Lee to represent traditional Kyoto at its best.  The day by then had turned quite cold, so we retreated to the train station to retrieve our bags before taxing over to Rakutoso, the Three Sisters' Inn, where we will be staying for the coming four nights.


Although Lee swore he just wouldn't take any more photographs of scenes in and around this ancient capital, once he had his camera in hand, shot after shot just appeared, snatched out of the clear air onto his camera's memory card.  The city is simply too picturesque to ignore!

 Ted has become our official photographer, having discovered the particular pleasure of the panoramic shots his new camera allows.  One consequence: more images of Lee (usually with Sean) in Japan than have existed prior to this particular moment:

There are even (a very few) cherry trees in blossom, giving Kyoto even a more charming and romantic atmosphere than usual.  

Now if the weather would only warm up a bit ...