Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
The far too sweet smell of kinmokusei (Orange Osmanthus olive tree, fragrant olive) is in the air in these parts since yesterday, as the weather cools off.
I believe this is a restaurant, but I'm not sure, and I have no idea why it's called "Eleven," maybe they are fans of Spinal Tap.
A few hours ago I was at Kyoto International Conference Hall (site of Kyoto Protocol, World Water Forum). There is a big international atherosclerosis symposium starting tomorrow, and I was asked to put together a slide show of my photos for the opening ceremony to introduce Kyoto to the delegates. The digital projector is the size of a refrigerator.
This evening was the rehearsal, so I got to see my pictures on the huge screen, like drive-in theater size. While it was running, the Chairman and organizing committee saw it for the first time, and liked the pics so much they suddenly decided to drop the planned opening and move my show to the top of the program. Woo-hoo!
Renge-ji is not on most tourist maps, but it's one of my favorite places in Kyoto. Founded in 1662 at the base of Hiei-zan, Renge-ji is a temple of the Tendai sect, headquartered at Enryaku-ji at the top of the mountain.
Even in tourist season, this place is quiet. For an extra 300 Yen, you can have matcha service on the rear pavilion (not pictured) by a nice little brook.
This is what the tsunami warning graphic looked like on Japanese TV after this morning's Hokkaido quake. Despite the magnitude, little damage seems to have been done.
From 13th Century, but Nishi-Hongan-ji was moved once and various parts of it were rebuilt through the 16th Century.
This is not one of the bigger buildings on site. Can you imagine having to approach this past all the guards, then once inside having to traverse the huge hall to have your audience with the Shogun?
If you were a scrawny little monkey-faced Shogun like Hideyoshi, you would certainly position yourself at the back of the room, to make your subjects humble themselves.
Our kitchen window.
You must be thrilled to get updates on my geckos, but anyway this baby appeared this week for the first time. You may have seen the picture of Carla with eggs showing that I posted a while back. The size of the large star etched in the window glass serves as a good size reference.
I suppose this is her offspring, at least her second pregnancy (previously Carl Jr was born, and he spends much time hunting on our window), and there clearly are two eggs visible in the previous pic, so there must be another somewhere. It's funny, they all have different habits, ways of walking, moving, hunting. Even a simple reptile, it's brain hard wired with basic routines for survival, has variations.
I can't decide whether this is an inuyarai (to stop dogs from peeing on the house) or a holder for large paper umbrellas (bangasa). Both?
Mikan (tangerines). The book on the stand in the background in frot of the butsudan (buddhist altar) is something spooky. It's one continuous sheet of thick paper folded into a book with 31 days, a register of family deaths over the centuries. Mama turns the page every day, and ancestors receive the blessings and offerings. Who knows how old it is, I don't know the emperors' names listed with the entries.
My mother-in-law doesn't know it yet, but I'm planning to use her zasshiki as my office, after working there for a few hours last weekend.
The seasons turn when you aren't paying attention. I'm wearing a sweatshirt tonight.
Something wack I saw on mefi a couple months ago. Two photos from slightly different angles dumped into an animated gif. Pictures taken today at Takaragaike Park, a statue by an artist in Guadalajara, MEX, a sister city of Kyoto. click here sucker
Click for 1024 X 768 desktop background/wallpaper image of a teahouse.
Bigger version of previously-posted photo.
Thousand years old, blah-blah-blah, UNESCO World Heritage, blah-blah-blah, tallest in Japan, blah-blah-blah, who cares. Bob Dylan was HERE!
Click for 1024 X 768 desktop background image.
At this moment, the TV news is showing thousands of people packed onto this bridge, Ebisu-bashi, and neighboring bridges over the scummy Dotonbori River. Hanshin fans are one inning away from clinching their first Central League pennant in 18 years, as second-place Yakult is losing to Yokohama 12-6. Despite pleading from the municipal government not to do so, hundreds of fans will likely be plunging into this bacterial broth in a few minutes.
Buu-chan, born in Tibet and the mascot of a new NGO concerned with asian environmental issues, is fast becoming a leading celebrity in Miyagawa-cho. When I stopped by, a maiko stepping out of a several houses away called out to him from down the block: "Buu-chan!"
A place you could hardly find if you weren't looking for it, the tiny entrance wedged between souvenir shops in the short Sanjo St. shopping arcade west of Kawaramachi.
Happened upon some guys this week mixing kabetsuchi while remodeling a shop in a traditional building behind the Kyoto Royal Hotel near Sanjo-Kawaramachi. I'll take a picture of the place when it's not covered in plastic sheeting.
The ocha-ya in Miyagawa-cho have this pattern of rings as an identifying insignia.
Because I live here, I can pop in and take a picture when it's not thronged with tourists. I confess, I'm really a sucker for this porthole framing, and I honestly do it too much. Kyoto is a great place to get around by bicycle, and now we have four. I seriously have to get rid of at least one of them. It's a cool, breezy night here, and I'm lying flat on my back on the front (non-laundry) balcony, iBook balanced on my chest, looking up at the Moon and Mars, listening to crickets, sipping a little bit of rye, breathing air freshly minted by the northern mountains. Feels good.
Click for 1024 X 768 background of a stone purification basin at Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto.
The view from Kyoto. (Sony P-71, 3.2 MP, maximum tweakage)
This fine old house is on Sakaimachi-dori at the corner of Marutamachi, across from the Sakaimachi gate of the old Imperial Palace.
Members of the imperial family do occasionally stay at the palace, but the huge grounds were opened up as a public park after the capital moved to Edo, renamed Tokyo, in 1868. It has enormously wide gravel paths, ballfields, lots of interesting trees like akamatsu and kuromatsu, red pine and black pine, sort of Kyoto's Central Park.
(Clicky go biggy, 1024 X 768)
By request, Heian Shrine wallpaper. Yeah, it's pretty big.
Ayako mai at Hounen-in
There is a large international medical conference coming up at the end of this month at the Kyoto International Conference Hall near my house, and I've been asked to provide some photos for a slide show introducing Kyoto to participants from all over the world. If you have seen any photos here that you think would be appropriate, I'd appreciate if you would drop a note in the comments. a few words description would be enough, or you could use the search box. Thanks.
Update: more kibune photos and video in November 2004.
Click for 1024 X 768 desktop background of the lantern-flanked steps at Kibune Jinja.
I finally got around to scanning this old photo at a bigger size. Kibune, way up north, is the symbolic source of water for Kyoto.
From the end of the Keihan line at Demachiyanagi, take the little Eizan train to Kibune-guchi, or go all the way to Kurama and hike over the mountain temple route. Kurama-yama, Kurama-dera temple (actually a long series of sites) and Kurama onsen are great reasons to get outside the city proper, and when you get over the top to to Kibune there are elegant ryokan and restaurants where you can dine on tatami platforms (yuka) spanning the little Kibune River, still one of the best experiences I've had in Kyoto. Kibune is also a place to enjoy nagashi somen, one of the more bizarre Japanese culinary delights. You have to catch noodles sliding down a bamboo chute in icewater. See the Super Deluxe blog for a video of nagashi somen.
Cheap? you want the cheapest hotel/ryokan/minshuku/hostel/flophouse in Kyoto? Kyoto Cheapest Inn (catchy name) near Nijo Castle on Marutamachi may be the very cheapest "Guest house" in Kyoto at ¥900 for backackers with their own sleeping bags/rolls, ¥1600 for a futon.
Very busy, sorry about lack of posts. here's a picture I took Saturday, and I'll take this opportunity to answer a few questions from readers that I haven't gotten to yet. (Which is not to suggest that I have a huge number of readers or questions from them). 1. Sorry, I'm not going to make a background /wallpaper of Kyoto Tower, because it's an eyesore, that's why. 2. I called it "alive in kyoto" because I thought my family would keep in touch with me this way, you know "I'm still alive here." Ha. As far as I know, no one in my family back home looks at it, though. 3. There are 2 driving schools in my area, Takaragaike Driving School and Iwakura Driving School, but I have no idea which is better. 4. Kyoto Baptist Hospital has traditionally been touted as the English friendly place (they have English consultation forms), but I fear their cramped waiting areas in cold and flu season. Also, I've never been treated by someone who spoke English. You'll wait longer at prestigious Kyoto University Hospital, but in spacious department-specific lobbies, so that if you have an orthopedic problem, you won't be with the sneezing, mucosal masses.
