Japan Trip 2

I've realized that I'm going to have to give a nearly day-by-day account of this trip in order to post all the cool pictures I want to post.  I can skip travel days, but the rest are pretty full of picture worthy material.

The last post was about our arrival and first full day of playing.  This post will be about our second day.

After our usual wonderful breakfast, we went to Kyoto Station and picked up the Nara Line south to Inari Station and went to the Fushimi Inari Shrine.  Fushimi Inari is definitely one of my favorite places in Japan.  These orange gateways are referred to as "torii", and Fushimi Inari has millions of them.  They have two pathways going up the side of the mountain that are completely lined by torii.  The picture here is the entrance to the two torii pathways from the top.  Going up the torii appear blank (see next picture down), but from the other side going back down they have kanji writing on them (next picture).  The pathways are completely awesome.

At the top of the torii paths there is another pathway leading up the mountain that we took.  Not many people take it, so it was perfect for us.  I don't know how far up we went, but we came across an area that was full of what I call little fox shrines.  There were hundreds of them.  The picture down lower in this post shows some of the little shrines.  In one area there was a natural bowl, cup-like area in the mountainside that was full of small shrines.  I wish I could describe it adequately.  We didn't take pictures of that particular area or even go down into it because there were people dressed in white traditional Japanese clothing who were holding ceremonies and praying.  We just moved quietly past, with the smell of incense in the air around us.  It was really a cool extra hike, very peaceful and quiet with good views and not strenuous hiking.  Also I saw my first bamboo forest, which was also cool.  

After coming back down the mountain, we did some minor shopping at the touristy places around and in Fushimi Inari Temple, then took the Nara line back one station, got off and found the 207 bus to take us to Kiyomizu Temple.  We did take it in the wrong direction initially, but got turned around (got off and took it in the right direction) and rode it up to the Kiyomizu-michi stop.  We got off and walked up a VERY steep hill to Kiyomizu Temple.

A few comments about that.  I continuously forgot that Japan is comprised of mountainous islands.  There's not all that much flat land, and the mountains are pretty vertical. This "hike" up to Kiyomizu Temple was one of those nearly vertical places.  Probably it wasn't all that long, but it seemed like it was.  Also, although I wished the sun had been out more on this trip, I'm actually grateful that so much of the time it was overcast.  The temperatures were in the mid-70s, but the humidity was so high that I spent a lot of time sweating, including on this climb up to the Temple.


Kiyomizu Temple is famous for it's open air stage that overlooks Kyoto.  The view from here is pretty spectacular.  The last picture is of a portion of Kiyomizu Temple rather than of the view.  I didn't enjoy this temple as much as I might have ordinarily because I was tired, and my shoes had rubbed a second blister, on the opposite foot from my first blister from the day before.  So we didn't explore Kiyomizu temple as much as we probably should have.  Nor did we shop at any of the shops lining the streets  approaching Kiyomizu Temple.  By this point we were hungry.

We went back down to the bus and took back to Kyoto Station.  We finally just ate at a place there in Kyoto Station, since it was so late by then and we were starving.  I had curry, which was okay.  I was so hungry by then I'd have eaten almost anything.  

After reviving at lunch, we went back to Teramichi for shopping.  We found an Animate store and spent quite some time there doing anime shopping.  I bought a Japanese fan with cats on it at a shop on the way out of the shopping area.

Two things happened on this day that were repeats of my initial trip to Japan.  One was buying the fan.  I also bought one the first time I went over.  The second was: at Kiyomizu Temple, I was stopped by a group of school kids with their teacher, asking if they could practice their English on me.   That's what happens when you're a blond in Japan.  I enjoyed it though.  This group was older than the group from my previous trip.  That time it happened at Nijo-jo and it was young grade-school kids.  This group may have been middle-school.

After shopping we returned to Shimizu ryokan.  We stopped at a Lawson's on the way and I picked up beer and snacks, since our room had a small refrigerator.  My friend always picked up something more substantial to eat when we stopped for evening food supplies, but evening beer and snacks worked for me.  

And that was our second full day.

     

Japan Trip 1

I'm back in town!  I took so many pictures on my trip to Japan though (several hundred) that I'm going to have to talk about the trip in several blog posts to get everything in.  

I went to Japan as a vacation trip with a friend of mine.  We've talked about going for almost 10 years now, so since we both had the time last month, we just decided to go.  The trip was great, despite the fact that I picked up my third cold in the last 6 months.  We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  I'll talk about it a little at a time so I can get in the pictures I want to get in.  

We flew into Tokyo Narita airport straight from DFW, a 12 hour flight, and arrived about 1:30 pm.  We got our Rail Passes and took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto, changing trains in Shinagawa.  We arrived in Kyoto around 7:00 pm and walked to the ryokan (traditional Japanese Inn) we stayed at in Kyoto.  I made that sound easy, but we wandered around a bit trying to find it.  Japanese cities tend NOT to be laid out on a grid, plus only major streets have names, and buildings as a rule don't have numbers on them.   Finding things is by landmarks and wandering.  


Anyway, we got there and the place was more than worth finding.  It's name is Shimizu Ryokan, and the first picture on this post is of it.  We stayed there four nights and ate breakfast there every morning.   Traditional Japanese breakfast is fish, vegetables, rice and miso soup (see above).  This picture I took with my phone one morning.  The food was delicious.  Our room was an 8-tatami room with a small table, futons and a private bathroom.  We decided public baths were a little more traditional than we were willing to get. The place was perfect for our purposes.  The staff was exceptional and every afternoon when we came in, they brought us tea.


The first day we were there we walked back to Kyoto Station and got a 2 day pass for the subway and bus system so we could move around freely.   Then we took the subway up to Nijo-jo which is a palace in central Kyoto.  Nijo-jo is pretty awesome (picture above) and has nightingale floors - the kind that "sing" like a nightingale when you walk on them.   We wandered the grounds a bit and took lots of pictures.  Then we got on a bus and went to Kinkakuji Temple.   I should mention that these places are famous and attract a LOT of tourists, so when you see pictures with no extraneous people in them, you know I waited a while to take them.    You can see why Kinkakuji is so famous.  It's just beautiful (picture below).


The weather wasn't really cooperative while we were in Kyoto, raining on and off, but we just carried umbrellas and kept going.  It never was serious enough rain to dampen our enthusiasm or make life difficult.

Next we went back to Kyoto Station and walked over to Sanjusangendou Temple.  This temple has several thousand statues of Buddha inside the temple, but no picture taking is allowed inside, so there's only outside pictures, and none of the thousands of Buddhas.  Most of the temples don't allow pictures to be taken inside because the flash from photography damages the paint and finishes.  Restoration is being done in many places that we visited, and of course everything is continuously maintained.

This picture is of a big bell and log for ringing it outside of the temple at Sanjusangendou.  After leaving Sanjusangendou temple we walked back toward Kyoto Station and found a place near the Station to have a late lunch.  I had a pork cutlet set.  Yum.  

Unfortunately the tennis shoes I took on this trip were slightly too big and gave me a nice blister on my left foot after this first day of walking.  We walked more on this trip than I have in years, so I'm sure it was good for me. 

After our late lunch we took the subway to a place I remembered where there was a shopping district.  I remembered correctly!  It's called Teramichi shopping area, and we found a store that carried some anime and did a little shopping there before calling it a day and returning to the ryokan.

That was our first full day in Kyoto.  I found representative photos from that day and posted them here.   You can see why I'm going to need to talk about this trip in several post, since these were just first day pictures.   

Bottlebrush

I thought I'd go ahead a get a short post in this evening because I discovered a new plant flowering in my back yard.  It's a red bottlebrush.  Isn't it pretty?  I didn't notice it before because it's almost the same color as the fence.


The people who owned this house before me spent a lot of time planting random plants, shrubs and flowers around the place, but so far I have no cause for complaint.  Everything that's coming up has been flowering.  It's an amazing thing.  And kind of fun because I never know what's going to flower next or what it may look like.  So far I'm proud to admit I've been able to figure out what the plants are from the flowers.   Of course there are lots of plants around the place that don't flower, and those I don't really know what they are.   

I did end up re-potting things yesterday.  I even made up my mind and re-potted the two little pine trees into a deeper pot.  We'll see if they grow taller now.  I just couldn't bring myself to purposely stunt them.  Guess I'll never make a bonsai gardener.  Anyway, they survived the re-potting and seem happy so far in their new pot.  I moved the moss with them - just essentially picked the whole thing up out of the shallow silver box and put it on top of soil in a deeper pot.  Hopefully it will all thrive there.

I also re-potted the Wandering Jew and the spider plant (airplane plant?).  All the re-potted things seem to have survived the process with no ill effects.  I also pulled my aloe vera out of the patio corner where I had them huddled against the winter freezes.  I pulled out the limbs that were dead and/or dying from freeze damage.  The plants are actually making a good comeback and look better now that they are cleaned out somewhat.


So I ended up pottering around the house yesterday as well as puttering.  It was a perfect day for it, and kind of a nice relaxing way to spend a Sunday.

That's it.  Just wanted to post my newest backyard flower.   

Sunny Sunday

I do so like this house early in the morning, and especially on a sunny morning.  There's so much natural light.  And of course, sunshine never fails to lift my spirits.

Not that I'm particularly in need of having my spirits lifted.  It just makes me happy to see the sun. And the cat kids like to lay in the sun when it's not hot early in the morning.

I'm home for a full weekend this weekend, which is a little unusual here lately.  So I'm doing all the puttering around the house chores - laundry, mopping and vacuuming, dusting, cleaning up cat areas, cleaning up kitchen, etc, etc.  It's just a nice, quiet, puttering Sunday, which is really my favorite kind.  I may do some plant potting later.  I should plant those two cuttings that I picked up from the ground at the garden place and put in dirt, the Wandering Jew and the airplane plant.  They're both doing well, and should probably be put in bigger pots.  And I'm still fighting with myself about whether to put the two little pine trees in a bigger pot.   Whether I pot things today or not will probably depend on how much energy I have left after the house chores. 

I finally got a relatively decent picture of the female red-wing blackbird.  She's very schitzy, so the picture is through the door and not excellent, but you can see her.  The picture of her facing me is even worse, but you can see how dark the markings are on her breast.  That's what finally helped me decide what she was.  I haven't seen the blackbirds or cowbirds around lately, so I'm assuming they can find plenty to eat without the feeder.  I still have plenty of sparrows and house finches and mourning doves though.

The cat kids survived my being away just fine.  They're finally warming up to my pet sitter, which is good since I'm going to be away on trips a fair amount this year.  I really appreciate my pet sitter.  It's just nice to know that someone is going to be at the house at least once a day and that the old lady cats are getting some attention.     

My baby peach trees are struggling this year.  That's another thing I need to do, plant them out in the yard.  I don't think they like the pots, and of course, the weather has been pretty up and down, temperature-wise.  In fact this week the temps are supposed to bounce up and down every day from 50s to 80s.  Even my grass is just starting to come in strongly, which is way late.  And of course we had those two days that dropped down into the upper 30s-low 40s.  Temps like that this late in Texas really seems to throw off growing things.  And add to that a decided lack of rain, it's no wonder things are struggling a little.  My roses are going gangbusters though.  I have roses ranging in color from pale pink to deep red.  No yellows though.  The people before me don't seem to have been much into yellow.  

I've turned my sprinkler system on this year.  I don't know if it's early to be turning it on or late since I moved in here last July.   It feels like it's been a dry year so far.  Lately anyway.  I think the only reason we're not farther behind compared to normal rainfall amounts is that we had decent rain in January.   Hmmmmmm.  While I'm puttering, I should also move the aloe vera out away from the house where they can catch rain when we do get it.  They're still all huddled up near the house for protection from freezing - which didn't work too well, but mostly they survived.

Anyway, I suppose I should get back to the chores.

Coast to Coast

I'm seriously ready to go home. I've been traveling for business this week.  I flew to San Diego last Saturday for a five day meeting.  That's where this lovely flower came from.  I believe it's called a Bird of Paradise flower and they were blooming in front of my hotel.  I took this picture with my phone.

Then early Thursday morning I left San Diego and flew to Savannah, Georgia, where I am now, for a three day meeting.  We have a little break this afternoon, and then will get back together.  We are going to try to do some sightseeing in Savannah today, although the weather has not been cooperating.  It's extremely windy and wet out there, so we'll see how the tourist stuff goes.

Then early tomorrow morning I fly home - which I'm seriously ready for.  It'll be nice to be home and see if I can get my cats to forgive me for being gone for so long.

The interesting thing is that I left my air conditioning on in my house when I left since it was forecasting 80 degree days.  Yesterday morning they had a record low temperature, in the high 30s!  Luckily, on Thursday I flew though Dallas on my way between San Diego and Savannah and realized that it was COLD in Texas.  I asked my pet sitter to turn on the heat for Addy and Zoe.  So they shouldn't be both cold AND pissed off at me.  

The weather has been crazy.  It was cold and rainy in San Diego, it's 70s and wet and windy here, and Dallas has had record lows.  One of the woman at this meeting says they just got 16 inches of snow where she's from in Minnesota, and I think the guy from St. Louis said they have snow too.   Texas temp have been swinging back and forth from 80s to 50s.   It's just been weird-assed frigging weather.

The meetings I've been attending have been going really well.  I'm happy to have them winding down, especially the first one, as I was responsible for a lot of that one.  It's nice that it's over after more than a year of planning.   This second one has felt like something of a free ride since I'm not so responsible for it.  I'm glad their both nearly over though and I can now look forward to vacation time at the end of May. 

Oh yeah, it is May now isn't it?  That happened when I wasn't looking.  Or rather it seems like most of this year so far has happened when I wasn't looking.  Time's moving by way too fast.

Anyway, time to finish up  this post.  I just realized I was past due for one.  Later.   

Blooming time of year

I owe a big thank you to the previous owners of this house for planting flowering perennials that I can enjoy as I try to identify them.  I'd say they had a penchant for pink though, because the majority of blooming things so far have been pink.  Still, I love growing and blooming things, and so far I've got that in spades at this new house.  

Here's another picture of the swallowtail from last week.   He was so nicely cooperative.

Besides the pot of blooming pink azaleas out there, one of my rose bushes is blooming with the biggest pink blossoms I've ever seen on a rose.  These flowers are huge, probably larger than my outspread hand, and really gorgeous.  My rose bush in the front of the house is blooming deep red.  Those roses are gorgeous also, but not as huge as the pink roses in the back.  They're all long stem roses though.

I also have a plant that's blooming with big orange blossoms that I think is an amaryllis.  It's so great to see them all.  I can't wait to see what comes up next.  I also have a lot of mint growing out there, which I'm told I need to start thinning out because it will take over everything. 

I have two big trips coming up in the not too distant future.  One starts next Saturday and is back to back business trips - one in San Diego and the next in Savannah.  I'll be spending 5 days in San Diego then crossing the country to spend 3 days in Savannah.  It's a longer stretch than I like to be out on business trips, but it just worked out that way.

The second trip is at the end of May and it's a vacation trip to Japan.  My friend and I have been talking about doing it for 10 years, and suddenly realized that our timing might not ever again coincide as well as it does at the end of May.  So we're going.  It should be a blast.  

Luckily I have a good pet sitter who will watch the girls while I'm traveling.  Today I'm trying to plan wardrobe for the business trips.  It's so much easier packing for a vacation trip then planning and packing for business trips where I have to be professional. 

Actually, I might want to get used to an increased amount of travel.  I'm running for President-elect of the national organization I'm involved with, and if I win the election, I'd be President in 2015.  That year the organization would ask me to commit 30-40% of my time to them, mostly as travel, to represent the organization nationally and internationally.  That will be a LOT of travel.  The election's not until September, so I won't know until early October if I won or not.   So I'm not going to think about it until then.

I have a new Internet provider!  I finally got tired of fighting with the Internet connection provided by Time Warner.  It was so unstable, it dropped the connection randomly, including during transactions, and sometimes it wouldn't connect at all.  They came out the the house multiple times, and two different service reps told me the signal to my house was just barely good enough to carry the Internet connection, etc.  So when AT&T came to my door, I jumped at the chance to change.  So far I haven't regretted it.  Connection works every time and hasn't yet dropped anything I've been working on.  That makes me really happy.   I don't do well when I don't have an Internet connection.

Guess I'd better get back to wardrobe planning.  Later.  

Blackbirds and Butterflies

I really like Spring.  I love it when things turn green again and leaf out, instead of the dull, dead tree and shrub look. And I love blooming things, even if I don't always know what they are.

This lovely fellow flitted around my Indian Hawthorne in my back yard and was cooperative enough to let me take several shots with my new camera before he flew away.  Isn't he gorgeous?  

I just got back this morning from another trip, this one to Washington DC.  It was a nice, uneventful trip, and since I'm back to full health, it wasn't a bad trip.  I got to see the cherry blossoms along the Potomac, although not close up.  They're in full bloom right now, but due to the meetings, I only got to see them from something of a distance on the cab ride in.  Still, I did get a feel for how beautiful they are, and how many there are!  Amazing!  

I laid down in the recliner about 12:30 this afternoon and woke up at 3:30 with both cats napping on me.  I guess I was tired from the trip.  

My bird feeder continues to be a big hit with the birds in the area. Here's my red-wing blackbird friend.  I've seen the female too but haven't gotten a good shot of her yet.  When I got home this morning the feeder was completely empty, which is amazing considering I filled it Wednesday.  I have a small flock of sparrows and a small flock of cowbirds, besides the other random species, so it's being decimated pretty quickly.  

I'm really happy to have a lawn growing again and things blooming, but once again I have blooming things that I'm trying to figure out what they are.   I have the Indian Hawthorne of course, mostly pink ones, but I have at least one small white one.  I also have a tall plant of Queen Anne's Lace growing out there and beginning to bloom and a pot of what I think are pink azaleas.  That's this lower picture.   I'm really glad to have the new camera too, so I can take pictures of all these plants and birds and butterflies.  And of course pictures of the cat-kids, but I'm giving you a break today from cat-kid pictures.  


So that's about all that's going on.  I'm in a great mood because it's warm, pretty and gorgeous outside ad I can have the house opened up while I do chores.  It's supposed to be in the 80s the next several days so again I'll be switching between heat and AC.  What can you do?  I try not to use AC, but I hate being hot.  Maybe the ceiling fans will be enough.

Later.