As seen on a 10 yen coin!

Greetings folks. This is my second blog this week on the Shinkansen. We've just passed the cloud-covered area where Mt Fuji is supposed to be, but today she (are mountains masculine or feminine?) graced us with a glimpse of her snow-capped summit from the side. It also made me wrench my neck, so a visit to the chiropracter is due in the near future.

Kyoto was pure edutainment. Les and I went to a small town on the outskirts of Kyoto called Uji. If all the signs, tourist information and plaques are to be believed, the town features quite prominently in “The Tale of Genji.” It's also famous for its green tea, but more on that later. After taking some photos of famous bridges, we headed over to Byodo-in, a famous temple that is on the 10 Yen coin. It was really crowded and full of vicious photographers who would push, bite and kick anyone in their way to get the perfect shot. After we surveyed the temple grounds and recovered from the photographer's beatings, we headed to an Japanese tea shop to sample some good quality mochi. I find drinking strong green tea to be relaxing, but I still can't get over the bitter taste. One of these days I'm going to try and put sugar and milk into it, but I'm afraid I might lose my visa.

Continuing with the travelogue, our next stop was Fushimi Inari, a place renowned for its many red torri gates. When Les and I read Lonely Planet about a “Holy Mountain,” we fixated on the wrong part of the phrase. While it was certainly “holy,” it was also a mountain. A small one, but still nothing I wanted to carry a laptop bag full of pamphlets and food up. At times the climb up Fushimi Inari was crowded, at other times quite and restful. Some of the torris were brand new, while others were covered with cobwebs and about to rot away. When we began to approach the top there were more and more graves guarded by fox statues (the aforementioned “Foxi”). The top of the mountain was indistingushable from any of the other graves and shrines, but there were a lot of stray cats up there for some reason. I had to restrain Les from using them as furry soccer balls. Both Les and I went a bit camera crazy. He took over a hundred photos there alone, I nearly half as many. It's going to require more effort to go through the lot of them and prune the ones I don't want to keep than it was to take them all.

The next day saw a return to Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavillion. While I have been there numerous times and still enjoy it despite the crowds, this was Les' first time. He was suitably impressed, although the crowded bus we took there left him in a whiny mood for the rest of the day.The higlight of my day was asking a passerby to take a photo of us using my best Japanese. It turned out she was Korean. After that particular debacle, we visited Gion to look at some tea and sweet shops that had been recommended by my students.

We called our second day in Kyoto to a premature halt in order to return to Anjo. I hope to chronicle it a bit later in the future

Until then, peace and out

-Blake