The Hairless One visited us from time to time. He was larger than us. He challenged no one, and would not be challenged. He simply sat among us, silent and immobile as the mountain rocks.


A monkey swimming.


A baby monkey wrapped around a pool. This is a split second after it noticed me. It was even cuter when it didn't see me.


This is near the main monkey grounds.


Monkeys are friends!


So that's what he does on the other 364 days of the year...


Yes, random kid in the Tokyo Metropolitan Gov't Building - it is good to have a friend. Multiple ones, in fact.

Sorry I haven:t updated. Temple stay was fine, Monkey park was great. Hiroshima was depressing. Rushing around Kyoto buying last minute souveniers was tiring. Someday, I:ll look up how to spell souveniers.

Since I:ll have much more time tommorrow, I:ll just do a final update then, from the comfort of my apartment. I took over 1000 pictures. I will make a super site, full of commentary, pictures, and such. I:ll send that link out once it:s created.

I:m leaving at 1PM Saturday. I:m landing in Detroit at 12:00 PM Saturday. That:s difficult to think about, and kind of weird.

First thing I:m gonna do once I get back and make sure my apartment hasn:t been looted? Make a hamburger. I miss them.

Need to go get stuff ready and packed for tommorrow.

THe monkey park was everything i hoped for and more.


I will post stuff on it as soon as I can. I even got videos!! Oh, man. Anyway, the post probably not for a couple days, though, unless they have internet at the temple i:m staying at tommorrow (it:s gonna take some time to get to, so much of the tommorrow will be spent traveling. Tokyo->Osaka->Koya-san temple complex->temple. Appx 5-6 hours). Anyway, i:ll update from Osaka once I get back.

Photo Dump Kyoto / Tokyo

The last morning of my stay in Kyoto, I went to Fushimi Inari, a shrine on the outskirts of the city. The fox is considered the messenger of Inari, the god of cereal grains.


Paths climbed up the mountain, through hundreds of torii.


I did a double take when I saw this branching. It seemed slightly like an optical illusion to me.


Dragons are associated with water in the East, so many of them served as fountains. Shinto Shrines had basins in front of them for worshipers to wash hands and drink before entering.


because there are so many Shrines and temples in Kyoto, you:ll often come across Torii in the middle of city streets, with the temple several blocks away. These are usually considered the :true: entrances to the temples.


A view of Kyoto from the city park.


Kinkaku-ji temple is a major tourist attraction. It:s quite pretty, of course, but I had seen better temples grounds. Also, being so well known, it was packed. By the number of people, you could see why the temple was layered in gold...



Welcome to Kinkaku-ji. Do you want to buy something?

(Admittedly, that:s a bit unfair to pick on Kinkaku-ji... every major temple and shrine I visited had some buildings converted to gift shops/ gift shop rooms. The reason why I especially noticed this in Kinkaku-ji was because the grounds consisted of the temple, a very small park, and the shops area. I saw better temples without paying an admission price)

Tokyo

As stated in the last post, the Tokyo Museum had many impressive articles. I really think my sister would:ve liked it, because they had a special exhibit on some Buddhist works from a particular period that I can:t recall right now. Lacking the fundamental knowledge necessary to fully appreciate it, I could only see them as works of art. They were still quite nice, though. Unfortunately, photos of that area weren:t allowed.


Anyway, this is the masamune sword. Turns out the picture quality, as suspected, sucked. The sword itself is a work of art, and my favorite of the day.


Luckily, the name card came out clearly *sigh*


After leaving the museum, I found a nice surprise. The lanes of the park were packed with people admiring the cherry blossoms.


This is a picture of the areas they set aside with tarps and tables for family picnics.


It was windy, so the cherry blossoms were slowly falling off the trees. I don:t think you can tell in any of the pictures, though.


Me and some cherry trees.


After the Meiji Restoration, a group of Samurai angry at the gov:t for taking away their powers and adopting the ways of the west made their last stand at Ueno Hill. They were crushed by the gov:t forces. A few years later, the survivors petitioned the gov:t to build a memorial to the fallen. This is it.

I then went to Asakusa, another part of Tokyo. I had planned to attach myself to a tour, but, like I stated, I had just missed it. Anyway...


The street to Senso-ji was packed with people, with little shops lining the road. Ahhh. Also, the interior of the temple was so packed, that people on the outskirts of the donation area had to throw their coins in.

I then tried to look around some of the more modern parts of the city. I went into a computer / game store.


So close, and yet so so far... in the end, the language barrier was too great... (Final Fantasy 12, just released in Japan. I really want to play it, but will have to wait for the US release, which won:t happen for a few months... or half a year). Oh, something odd... Games and DVDs cost more here. around 35 dollars for a DVD, and 70 or so for games. Action Figures? Crazy high.

Oh, something cool: While wandering around Kyoto, I found a little shop with many small action figures. So... I probably have a near complete set of Final Fantasy 6 keychains now. Wheee!! And for much less than I would:ve paid on ebay.

I think I:m going to go stalk the squaresoft offices now. Tommorrow I shall venture forth to see the monkeys, the day after tommorrow I:ll go sleep at a temple on a mountaintop, and after that I:ll probably head back to Osaka for a couple of days to wrap up shopping and sightseeing in Kyoto (there were some places in both Osaka and Kyoto that I wanted to see and wasn:t able to. Also, Kyoto had the best shopping, in my opinion).

Tokyo has far too many other human beings in it for my taste. Give me moss covered temples and abandoned shrines over a megalopolis any day of the week.

However, today I got to see a real Masamune blade. That made this part of the trip worth it. Unfortunately, I was looking through the pictures I took at the Tokyo National Museum today, and many of them are probably a bit out of focus. My camera has this problem that, when the flash isn:t used, quality goes down. I:m not really sure how to fix this, and there were signs all over the place indicating that we couldn:t use flash photography in the museum. Anyway, it was worth seeing regardless. The rest of their sword collection was quite wonderful, as was the naginata they had.

I also accidently stumpled onto a massive cherry blossom viewing party. I have pictures of that that I will upload when I can. Wow. I mean, I can see why they make special outings for it. It was windy today, and the blossoms fell like a light snow. Anyway, the main throughfare of the park near the museum is flanked by cherry trees. Today, underneath all the trees, the people had laid down tarps and were having picnics. It:s a pretty big event. They had even brought out tables!

My Lonely Planet guidebook has been wrong on two things that slightly screwed me up. (1) There is no Virtual Reality gaming center in the Sony Building, much to my dismay. It was probably a temporary exhibition. And, (2), the free guides for Asakusa leave at 2 PM, not 3PM, as my book stated. Arrive at 2:10, and you:ll just miss them.

It turns out that wasn:t such a bad thing; the area got on my nerves pretty quickly. There:s a huge Shinto shrine in Asakusa. That:s one of the main attractions of the area. But, there were sooo many people there. . It really was kind of annoying, especially since not two days ago I was trekking through Shinto shrines in near silence. And, it being a city, not a few blocks from the Shrine was an :adult entertainment: shop (and they don:t censor their ads here, even ads on the street. Or at least, not censor in the way that the US thinks of it.) Is nothing sacred? *sigh* The whole atmosphere: jostling the crowds, the fact that in between the entry Torii and the shrine itself was a street filled with souvenier shops, the seedy places not 5 minutes walk away.... To me, it definitely did not feel like any sort of sacred ground.

Anyway, i:ll try to find a real internet bar soon to upload some pictures. I:ll be going to see the monkeys tommorrow or the next day. I need to make some lodging reservations for the last few days of the trip soon. Eep, less than a week left.

Here:s some guardian statues+


The gate guardians at Horyuju (spelling?) temple look particularly threatening. Also, notice that one:s mouth is open, and the other closed. This is because the first sound in speech is pronounced with closed mouth, the last with open mouth. Sort of like *Alpha and Omega*. Because one is sentinal for the beginning, and the other the end, their guardianship is all encompassing.




These guardians are at a small shrine off the Philospher:s path. I forget it:s name now, I:ll look it up later. The shrine was for the rice / harvest. Anyway, I like how they, too, follow the closed/open mouth convention of the above guardians. Today I saw some foxes that followed the same pattern. On a sad note, the toad guardians I saw did not. Though, they did have baby toads riding on them.



I:ll write more sometime when internet time doesn:t conflict with sightseeing time. Hopefully there:ll be something open late in Tokyo... (the only internet access I have now is open 10 - 5PM).

Richard Gere is a member of *Dandy House*!


Kyoto is VERY COLD right now. The temples are all very pretty, with picturesque grounds. However, many of them have giant *NO PHOTOGRAPH* signs displayed all over the place. Walking around was not nearly as pleasent as it could have been. So, many artificats and such have remained unphotographed... Also, seeing as how they are holy sites still in use, i feel kinda funny wakling around snapping pictures. Got to try to find lodging for Tokyo... internet use is limited now.

Crap. So, the HTML of the last post DID NOT WORK as I thought it would. Don:t have time to fix it. Just enjoy the pictures, and make sense of the narrative.

Day 3 update

Alright, so here:s a photodump. I:m not sure if I:ll have time to comment on them all. I don:t really even have time to resize them, so I hope that photobucket does it automatically. Anyway, I filled up my 512 MB memory card in 3 days. I heard there:s places that will burn them to a CD for you. I:m going to look for one. I:ve seen a -lot- of stuff. I plan to make a super site when I get back...

I apologize for the unelegantness of this post. However, I don:t have that much time...

(oh, and the colon key : is where the single quite should be)
(Oh, and my spelling of Japanese names for places is probably wrong. I:m going by pronounciantion, without referring to the guides I have).


This is the Umeda Sky Building. It is quite large. I didn:t get to climb it until my last night in Osaka, due to poor planning. Still... it is quite sight, and worth going up.

Another View of it. This was from a garden next to the tower. The flowers weren:t in bloom yet, but they had odd little statues all over the place.

My first trip was to Himeji Castle. Widely regarded as the best castle in Japan, it is an impressive sight. This picture is from just inside the outer wall. Yes, there is a wall, and a moat behind me. It would really suck to have to attack this place with rudimentary gunpowder weapons.

Another view of himeji, from a different angle. i got to go inside it, but wasn:t too sure if I was allowed to take pictures, as many of the rooms were dark on purpose.

This picture is a view from the top of the castle, looking out over the city of Himeji.

Right next to the castle, they had a park, Koko-en. Here is one view of it. It was soooo peaceful and devoid of crowds. I loved the architecture.

Here is another part of Kokoen.

The fish of kokoen enjoyed playing *Follow the leader*.

After Himeji, I took a bus up to visit engyoji temple complex. Oh, man. I have several stories of this place, all too long to type in the halfhour I have remaining. Anyway, parts of *The Last Samurai* were filmed here (ie, the parts showing the Samurai dude:s main hom). There are 37 Kannon lining the path for pilgrims. (i think Kannon is the incarnation of the merciful Buddha. Me, I like the Angry Buddha... I forget his name, but I have a couple pictures of statues of him).

You have to take a cable car to get to and from Engyoji. Advice: If you:re going to a place with only one means of access, check the :last cable car: leaving time, and plan around it.

I went to Horyju temple. This is the oldest wooden structure in Japan. I don:t have many pictures of it, and I didn:t prepare any for going online. This might be my favorite place having visited, though. I ended up getting a personal tour guide accidently, and received several hours worth of instruction on Buddhism. It was quite cool and informative.

After that, I made my way to Nara. Nara has the largest bronze statue in the world, a Great Buddha located in Todaji temple. There are also a lot of other cool sculptures. Nara also has deer you can feed.

I don:t have the image tools available to lighten up this picture. It is of the Buddha. I:ll leave that as an exercise to the reader. Here is another too-dark picture.

To finish the second day, I finally climbed the Umeda City tower, and watched night descend over Osaka. I missed the sunset, unfortunately, but still.. Here is a picture of me with Osaka behind me, taken by a nice Japanese woman.

I have loads of other pictures that I didn:t choose to post. Overall, the trip has been fun. The only suckiness has been my lack of planning. I got lost on the trains leaving Horyju, and ended up losing about an hour of time I would rather have spent exploring nara. I also ended up missing the sunset from the Umeda Sky Tower by about half an hour. And then, etting to Kyoto today, I wanted to get here early. So, i got here at around 8 ish... the English Tourist Center opened at 10, and i needed to get a hotel. Argh. Anyway.

Story Time*

People are extremely nice here, for the most part. UNLESS you are watching them on the train. Oh, man. Children learn from birth to rush for train seats once those doors open a crack. So, I was riding a train back from nara, and we stopped at the *Universal Studios Japan* connection. Well, the train was pretty empty until then. I noticed a lot of peopel waiting outside, and thought "this will be pretty interesting". So, the doors open, and there:s a mad dash for the seats. Mothers go and guard open sections, herding their children in with frantic hand motions. Only the fastest and most organized got them. It was definitely very "survival of the fittest". If they gave people weapons, I shudder what would happen. This only annoyed me when I first got there after landing, and some man beat me to a seat when I was held up by letting people out. It was clear that I wanted that seat, but...

Anyway, outside of the train? These are the nicest people you:ll meet. When i first landed and got to Osaka station, I was looking around trying to find the exit. Hotel Kinki had provided a rather nice map, so I don:t think I looked too lost. But, within a few seconds of looking at the station map, a nice man walked up and guided me to the tourist center, and pointed me in the right direction. This was cool, cause I wouldn:t have thought to go to the tourist center, but they provided me a useful map of the city.

Also, when I was at Engyoji, I ran into this Japanese family. I only saw a cuple other Westerners on the mountain. Not very many people at all, really, so it was nice. Anyway, the family smiled, so I smiled at them. There was an older couple, a mother, and two children, aged 6 and younger. So, the mother points at me and then says something to her daughter, the older of the chilredn. The daughter looks at me, and then hides behind her mother:s legs. The mother smiles apologeticaly, and explains how her daughter just started English classes. I smile and look at the daughter, peeking out from the safety of her mother:s legs. I say *Hello. My name is Charlie. Whats yours?* Her answer is muffled, as she refuses to look at me (she:s smiling the whole time, though). We kinda laugh, and the family heads off. The daughter waves a nervous *Goodbye* to me, and the mother thanks me for being nice. So, i:m taking off my shoes to enter this temple, and the family walks back. The mother explains how her mother would like to meet with me if I ever go to Nara or come back to Japan, and gives me their business card. I:m sorry I won:t really be able to accept, but... I thought that was really nice. I really don:t have the time to try to do anything, and would feel awkward, but still. It was a cool journey.

Engyoji was also :fun: for another reason... Let:s just say, this sign probably says *THIS PATH RESERVED FOR DUMB AMERICANS*. *sigh* I:ll tell that story later. Time to explore Kyoto.

Osaka, Day 2

Day One involved landing around 4 PM. The flight was long, and pretty boring. Honestly, I caught myself kind of excited about some turbulence we had once, because at least it was a break in the monotony. Then I came to my senses and the terror set in. Anyway, coolest part of the flight was opening up the window once, looking out, and seeing icy mountains filling the ground. Anyway, once I finally made my way to the hotel, it was around 7 PM. I meant to just lie down on the bed for a few moments to rest, but just kind of crashed instead.

Hmm.. some people just walked into the hotel lobby, and I can't tell if they don't want to use the computer, or if they're just being kind. There's only one computer at Hotel Kinki, and I'd rather not hog it.

Anyway, today was an adventure. To type it all out would take several hours, at least. I started the day wandering out of my room around 7 AM. I made it to the Umeda Sky Building. I wanted to climb it, but it was too early. Perhaps another day.

After that, I went to Himeji Castle, toured it and its environs. I visited Engyo temple complex. That's a story I want to tell, definitely.

My conversations with other people have largely characterized by stilted phrases, unspoken thoughts, and awkardness. So, in truth, it's a lot like back home. Anyway, the language barrier is a lot more difficult to get over than I originally thought it would be. I feel quite bad when some rnice people try to talk to me in Japanese, and I have no clue what they're saying. One quickly grows tired of saying "Wakarimasen". Anyway, there have been some bright moments, to be elaborated on when there isn't someone waiting for the computer. Also, there will be pictures, if I can.

Anyway, I'm alright here. Tommorrow is Nara day, and I think I'll try to head up to the top of the Sky Building at night when I get back. THe view of the city at night should be quite nice. Byebye for now.

Pre-Trip

So, the plan is to post pictures to this travelogue when I can, and share whatever anecdotes occured since the last post. However, I can't make any promise as to the frequency of updates,. The internet will cost money, I don't know whether or not I'll be able to transfer pictures from whatever computer I'm logged in with, and I want to minimize vacation time spent in front of a computer.

Anyway. The itinerary is as follows:

Leave the US on March 25th.
Land on March 26th at Kansai International Airport.
I will stay in Osaka the nights of the 26th, 27th, and 28th.
The 29th, I'd love to stay at the Koyasan temple complex, but didn't arrange lodging before hand. So, that might not work out. I'll still go there though, and ask at the tourist center if any temples spots are available.
The 30th, 31st, and 1st of April will be spent in Kyoto and the surrounding areas.
The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th will be spent in Tokyo.
The 5th will be spent in Nagano, with a trip to see the snow monkeys. I'm not too sure yet what I'm going to do on the 6th and 7th. I'll play it by ear.

That's it for now. Hopefully there'll be more updates soon.