Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
http://www.j-blog.com/movies/kibune2004.rm (15 MB RealVideo download).
Five minutes of handheld video clips of our little jaunt upriver to see the Momiji in Kibune on Monday.
Sorry, my blog spam countermeasures are stopping me from linking out to the other site where I am storing the file, so you'll have to copy-paste it.
Here is a picture I took in 1997 showing what the Kibune River looks like in summer, with tatami platforms stretched across the water. After hiking over Kurama in the heat of Kyoto, having a Japanese ryokan lunch here, sitting just above the surface of the rushing river and dangling your feet in the water, is an unforgettable experience. It was about ¥6,500 each plus drinks at the place we went, Nakayoshi.
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As the source of Kyoto's main river, the Kamogawa, is near here, Kibune Shrine goes back to the early days of Kyoto, and is the place to pray for a steady but not excessive supply of water. The Emperor in the ancient capital would send a rider on a black horse (representing rain clouds) up to Kibune Jinja to pray for rain when the crops needed it, and a white horse to pray for respite from the deluges of rainy season.
Above the magnificent lantern-lined steps, the small shrine is under some reconstruction now, but look for the cast-metal horses decorating Kibune shrine.
More about kibune on alive in kyoto.
kibune town site (Japanese).
The view through the "Panorama Car" on the Eizan Railway (left) into the mountains in northeastern Kyoto; Kibune-guchi Station at night (right).
(I'll add more photos later.)
Every year in the autumn leaf viewing season several temples have night viewing hours with artful illumination of the leaves. I was invited yesterday to a party hosted by Son of Soy blogger Rick and his girlfriend/master chef Mari, and ate and drank much more than my fill after leaf viewing in the lovely garden at Enkoji Temple in Sakyo-ku, which was certainly much, much less crowded than the bigger temples in Higashiyama-ku. There was ghostly shakuhachi music coming from somewhere out in the mist, and patches of illumination would very slowly fade in and out, highlighting the foreground, middleground, deep background or sometimes just a small stand of trees or bamboo. You become an aesthete just by watching. Thanks Rick and Mari, will pay back.
A pretty good dark beer in Okayama. There used to be a really great microbrewery in my neighborhood, Shirakawa Beer, but they stopped making it a couple years ago.
Careful there, I think your motorcycle is leaking oil on Heian history.
Next to the cigarette vending machine, between two parking lots on a sidestreet northeast of Senbon-Marutamachi is a marker showing a piece of foundation of the inner part of the original Heian Imperial Palace, from soon after Kyoto was officially founded in the 8th Century. This is north of Nijo Castle, so quite a bit west of the extant Imperial Palace. Related info here.
We went to Okayama this week on a Nozomi 500 Series Shinkansen, the fastest looking of the bullet trains.
Home of the Chariotaku.
Kurashiki gets 5 stars from Gregory for being so baby friendly. He really liked Tivoli Park, and both the park and the tourist information center located in the middle of the Bikan sightseeing area had baby changing facilities. We'll be back, and maybe go down to the sea as well next time.
Ryokan breakfast in Kurashiki. He was crawling around and around, shouting for joy, as happy as could be to explore a new room.
I have confidence in this. I've estimated that the huge amount of newly-registered Democratic voters will turn out in unprecedented numbers and make the difference in the election, despite the best efforts of the RNC to organize numerous schemes to prevent them from voting. My calculation was Kerry 279 and Bush 259, but it may be even stronger for Kerry.
We have been in Kurashiki in Okayama for a couple days. Kurashiki was a storehouse ("kura") town, and many of these old buildings still stand (it would take a lot to knock one down.), with ceramic tiles arranged in white plaster in fancy patterns. Kurashiki also has Tivoi Park, a branch of the world's oldest amusement park in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Greg's smug look of satisfaction after learning to stand up by holding the rail of his crib. He's been doing this for a couple days, so we were getting concerned about safety and falling. As we were talking about it, not five minutes after this picture was taken, he hove over the side and flipped forward, falling on his back on the tatami. Very scary, but he was fine and stopped crying in a moment.
