Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
Warm spring weather has arrived, and the new Ferry Family™ took a short jaunt over to the Kamo River, Gregory's first outing except for last Thursday's mandated one-month checkup (all clear).
The Gene Simmons look. He sticks out his tongue a lot. Is that common?
Bath time. It's important to look your best.
Be a little patient. With all the sakura searches here in the past couple weeks, you would think it was already here. In good time, my friends. The pictures will be here. In the meantime, Heian Shrine garden sakura in 2001 (my first lo-res digicam, no complaints please) and Osaka Castle Park (1995 or so).
Actually, Greg is getting more active day by day, and increasingly shows that he is focused and paying attention to us when we hold him and play with him. Tomorrow he will leave the house for the first time since coming home, ironically to go back to the hospital for his one month checkup. Photo taken by Yoshiko-mama with the Sony Cybershot.
Look how far we haven't come. This hillock near Gojo-Kawabata entombs the severed ears and noses of Koreans that were brought back as proof of conquest and presented to Hideyoshi by his soldiers in the late 16th century in exchange for rewards.
I'm one month old, and I weigh 1 kg more than when I was born. I was born at 11:30 p.m. during Tante Knight Scoop on Billy Zoom's birthday, February 20. Pretty cool.
Tomorrow is the last night fort this even in Higashiyama-ku. This is what Yasaka Pagoda (see previous post) looked like this evening. On the right is 1280 X960 Desktop Background image. The first two pictures were taken with a tripod, about 5-second exposures. the third one was handheld, about 1/3 second. I'm loving my Lumix FZ10.
Refurbished in 1436, so it's a little dusty.
"Prime Minister Koizumi invites the world to Japan!"
The English front page of the Japan National Tourist Organization website invites you with this greeting from the PM and a link to his English Yokoso Japan! video, but right underneath it is the notice that the Kyoto Tourist Information Center (across the street from Kyoto Station) has closed. Nice timing, folks. It wasn't so great anyway, as it was never open on Sunday, even though many tourists pour in on that day. "Duh!" says I.
Coincidentally, I often walk past the TIC on Sundays, and end up fielding a few questions from less-than-bemused travelers standing in front of the locked office. Maybe JNTO should just pay me as a field agent? A Starbucks is under construction in the office space next door (even though there is already a Starbucks outlet about 50 meters away), so maybe the TIC will become a cozy nook with those checkerboard tables. I hope the counter girls know where all the hotels are, because I think they are going to get a lot of questions unrealted to double Frappachoco. A few weeks ago I went into a Starbucks in Shiga and ordered a double espresso. The clerk (can't call her a barista) looked at me as if to ask, "Do we sell that?" Then her supervisor stepped in and handled my off-the-wall request.
Anyway, if you do come into town at The Death Star (Kyoto Station), there is an information counter with English speakers (I hope) on the second floor pavilion inside the station. If you are going out of the main entrance facing Kyoto Tower, go up the big escalator on your left, get off at the second floor and walk straight past Cafe Du Monde and Mister Donuts. The information office is on your right. There's also a cash machine that takes credit cards there.
The new steel bridge (with flying buttresses!) over the Kamo River in Meiji 7 (1874) and the same view in Heisei 16 (2004).
Born 3 weeks ago tonight. Unfortunately, daddy seems to arrive when Greg is sleeping off a big milkfest, so I get lots of closed-eye pictures. Yoshiko has taken many photos of alert and wide-eyed Greg with her camera, so I'll upload some of those soon. Anyway, he's getting bigger and stronger day by day, and becoming more vocal. Here's a picture of him showing his tongue, which he seems to do a lot.
Ponto-cho is a narrow alley between Shijo and Sanjo Streets with a mixture of teahouses, shot bars and restaurants.
Visitors to this blog may have noticed comments over the past year from an American serviceman in Iraq, Sgt. Jerry Pietrzak, US Army, formerly a resident of Kyoto. I asked Jerry to write a non-political (didn't want to get him in any trouble) memoir of his experience. Along with a friend, Pietrzak published a website with cartoons, commentary and photos during his tour of duty. He has just gone home. Below is his commentary:
By the time this gets put up on the web, it will have been over a year since I've seen my friends, my family, or my home. A full year, to say the least. I've experienced something that we in America haven't had for a generation: The experience of war.
the author, foreground
Leaving the political argument of "right" or "wrong" aside, and minding the ever-present issue of operational security (OPSEC), I can say at the very least that this has been an interesting year. I am in the U.S. Army's reserve component, which includes both the Army Reserve and the various Army National Guard units. Like many other soldiers, with just over twenty-four hours' notice, I had to leave my life behind. Some of my companions had to quit jobs, some had to quit school, and many had to close out their apartment and get their stuff into storage... inside one day. I was one of the more fortunate ones; the veteran's affairs representative at my school knows her stuff and took care of all my school concerns with ten minutes and one sheet of paper. Friends offered to pack up my stuff and move it into storage, so all I had to worry about was getting the relevant power of attorney to the friends and family who would be taking care of my personal business.
At the end of the 24+ hours, we reported to the armory with our bags and a few family members to watch us board a bus for the airport. I remember seeing many tears (even my usually stoic father shed his share), but was too stunned to feel my own. That was the quietest bus ride I have ever been on. The whole ride to the airport seemed filled with people looking out windows or straight ahead or just sitting with their eyes closed.
The whole long trip across the U.S. and then around the world was just that -- long. There's not much to say other than that. Our arrival in Kuwait, however, was surrealism at its best. We touched down in the early days/weeks of the war, and were out of the plane and in a sandbagged bunker in a minute or three. (When is the last time you made it from your plane to the baggage carousel in less than three minutes?) Again, another damn quiet bus ride, this time across Kuwait and into the desert night.
There is one thing I can say about the Kuwaiti desert, and that one thing is "sand". The sand was everywhere and in everything. We thought April in Kuwait was hot, with temperatures during the day getting over one hundred fahrenheit, but we had yet to learn what hot was.
The trip north into Iraq had everyone on edge. The border between Kuwait and Iraq is huge; massive rolls of concertina wire, tall stretches of electric fence, and sudden, deep ditches. The exact same sort of border some would like to see between California and Mexico, or maybe Israel and Palestine. Once in Iraq, the poverty became apparent. Some would say that the stark poverty came from U.S.-led sanctions, others from the fiscal policies of the former regime. The truth probably lies between the two extremes.
Once we were actually "in country", everything changed. Leaving your guarded compound, whether a camp, detention facility, or forward operations base (FOB), meant taking your life into your hands. Weapon functional? Gear on right? Full load of ammuntion? Map prepped? Know your route? GPS in hand with fresh batteries? Radios up and checked? Extra food and water? Vehicle fuelled, checked, and operational? These might seem basic, but if any one of these aren't "green", you're tempting fate. I know of more than one situation where people got into some serious danger because they didn't have everything together.
Going out to run missions was never easy. In the early days, the newness of the situation kept us on edge. By the time we got acclimated to going out and getting our work done, the heat arrived. Let me say now that 55 degrees celcius (about 138 degrees fahrenheit) is no joke, especially when you're wearing a heavy kevlar helmet, body armor, long sleeves and long pants, combat boots, goggles, an M-16 rifle, a full load of ammunition, and between two and five liters of water. Try standing in the sun for an hour or three with all that. Drinking a liter of water an hour is insufficient. I've had times when I'd get back, strip off my gear, pull off my t-shirt, and manage to squeeze enough sweat out of it to make a puddle 30 cm (12 inches) in diameter.
As the weather cooled, the danger levels increased. Regular attacks on my location rattled the nerves, but we were lucky that the number of casualities were very, very small. Of the 200+ attacks I have been through, the first had to be the worst. There were injured that night, some seriously... and I escaped injury because I had to stop to adjust a stack of books and notes I was carrying. Explosions are nothing like you ever see in the movies, and gunfire is almost equally different.
Through it all, I developed friendships, and we found things at which we could laugh. The mortar round that came too close for comfort to my living quarters was instead a riot because it managed to hit our only porta-john (outdoor toilet). Somehow, when your point of defecation blows up, things get silly. Little things like that.
The laughter was a tonic for us. You had to laugh when you had a chance, or you could lose it. I had weeks of working twenty hour days under combat conditions. I had friends get seriously injured, others killed. When you know there's been an attack or explosion or firefight, and you see your friends come back okay, it's... I can't think of how to describe it. Relief is close, but that's just one shade of color in that rainbow of emotions.
Everyone had some sort of escape they would retreat to when they had a chance. Some tried to work out, many read, others watched movies or listened to music. While my friends and family await my return stateside, I somehow chose to retreat to Japan. About six months prior to deployment, I finished a year studying at the Kyoto University for Foreign Studies (Kyoto Gaikokugo Daigaku, or Kyoto Gaidai). I amassed several Japanese movies (thank you Amazon), tried to study Japanese, or told stories from my time in Japan. (Over the last few months, I think I managed to download over half of the pictures from Alive in Kyoto.) Like I said; everyone had their escape. Mine just happened to be in Japan.
At this point, we're ready to return home. Everyone is still with us, alive and unharmed. We've returned from our various duty stations, seeing friends and others we haven't seen in a long time. Gear is getting cleaned, bags are being packed, and everyone is happily awaiting our flight home. Boredom and inconvience mean little to us now. We've made it through, we've done something very few will ever be able to do, and we're going home with the knowledge that we stepped up and did a good job.
(Note: Please forgive the omission of my job and my unit. Until I have actually left the theater and returned home, I am not at liberty to give those out).
Ryokan Kyoka, the first place I stayed on my bicycle tour in 1995. I happened to pass by the neighborhood the other day, a bit north of Kyoto Station near Higashi Hongan-ji Temple. Ryokan Kyoka is a typical-looking budget ryokan (more here) just a simple Japanese-style room with futon, shared bathroom and toilet, no fancy meals included, ¥4200 per person. Ryokan Kyoka has another location with even cheaper rooms, called Riverside Takase (Annex Kyoka), ¥3,500-3,900 yen per night. In hostels or so-called Gaijin houses, you can get down to ¥2,000 per night in communal rooms where you have to bring your own sleeping bag.
On the same block as Ryokan Kyoka is another budget ryokan, Daiya Inn.
I saw a dog pee on a mobster's car today. The mobster was not his master. When a mobster walks his dog with three henchmen in flanking position, though, this is also a sight funny to behold.
A street hustler at Shijo-Kiyamachi tries to sell a couple of young ladies on the magical wonder of dancing clowns. (Hint: look for an inconspicuous person standing off to the side with one hand obscured by a bag.) Result: Amazement, but no sale.
click for 1280x960 desktop background (225kb) of a famous alley in Gion (祇園), Kyoto.
Panasonic Lumix FZ10
March 12 (Friday) - 21 (Sunday)
Illumination from 6:00 p.m. until 9:30 p.m., each day.
Event website
A few pictures I took last year
In Kyoto's Higashiyama district at the foot of the eastern range, a walking path links temples and shrines from Shoren-in Temple in the north, passing Chion-in Temple, Yasaka-jinja Shrine, Maruyama Park, Kodai-ji Temple, Entoku-in Temple and Hokan-ji Temple, and on to Kiyomizu-dera Temple in the south.
Building on the keynote "harmony," this path is to be adorned with a rich display of light, shadow and flowers.
Various events and special night-lighting of temples in the area are being arranged for the Lighting and Flower Lane event.
* A River of Bamboo Lanterns
Placed into a stream flowing through Maruyama Park, 1,000 lanterns made of green bamboo float and flicker to create a scene of light and fantasy.
* Performing Arts on Stage
Dances and other traditional performing arts representing the essence of Kyoto culture are presented on a special stage set up in Maruyama Park.
* Modern Flower Arrangement Exhibition
Large flower arrangements are being prepared by various schools of flower arrangement, with the support of the Kyoto Ikebana Association.
* Kyoto Traditional Lantern Exhibition
Students at Kyoto universities and colleges are creating a unique display of works on the theme "Lights of Tradition."
* "Be Careful with Fire"
Coinciding with the Kyoto Lighting and Flower Lane event, a new "hayashi" (a type of traditional music) has been arranged to accompany the familiar night-time chant of "Hi no yo-jin" (Be careful with fire!).
Participants walk the streets calling out to residents and passersby, striking wooden clappers, bells and drums, while groups of local children chant songs of old Kyoto.
* Rickshaw Processions along the Lighting and Flower Lane
Mainly on weekends, Maiko and Geiko present a colorful spectacle as they ride in rickshaw processions from their respective places of business in Gion towards the Lighting and Flower Lane.
Taken by Yoshiko, of course (Sony Cybershot, through glass)
