Autumn in Japan

These two neighbourhoods within Tokyo were my favourite and ones that I made a point of returning to on my last day in Japan.  To get there I took the Yamanote Line to the Harajuku station. Harajuku again delivers on the contrasts I have seen throughout Japan - modern vs. centuries old traditions.  My first visit in the neighbourhood was the Meiji- jingu - koen .  This is a park just to the west of the train station.  There were many birdsongs in the air, it was peaceful and the shrine itself was pristine.  I really felt like I belonged in this park....I was quite moved actually.  It is a feeling that I had multiple times in Japan and I don't know how to explain it.  Almost like a part of me somehow comes from these lands. From there I headed down Takeshita - dori .  This is THE street to walk down if you want to see Japanese teenagers dressed in maid, punk-rock, electric, funk dress.  Anything goes.  The shops and the pedestrian only street are jam packed with young people exp

One of the memories that will stick with me about my trip is how beautiful city and village streets look in the evenings.  The narrowness of the streets, the latticed wooden doors and windows, the yellow lighting - not harsh at all, the sound of voices emanating from those doors and windows, shadows of people further down the street.  Well kept boutique and restaurant storefronts and entrances which are unique and so very inviting.  Here are a few pictures that capture these scenes for me. Kyoto - Pontocho-dori Asakusa - An izakaya with its akachochin lante rn s Asakusa - light drizzle on an arcade Kyoto - cafe along the Takase Ri ver Nara - entrance to small shopping com plex Kanazawa - Tatemachi Shopping Arcade Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Two of the more memorable nights in Japan were at Regenjo-in.  This is a Shingon Buddhist Monastery in a place called Koyasan, southwest of Nara.  The town of Koyasan was founded in 816 by a monk named Kobo Daishi who had gone to China in 804 or spent two years learning Buddhist teachings.  So let's just say that this town has a lot of history to it.  It is small, 4000 citizens, and can be compared to what the Vatican is for Christianity - the headquarters of Shingon Buddhism. It really is an amazing place to stay in and to get to.  To get there you can drive or take the train.  I took the train from Hashimoto to the terminal station of Gokurakubashi.  From there you transfer to a cable car that brings you up the mountain to Koyasan.  Finally a bus trip into the centre of town on an extremely windy road (cars and pedestrians prohibited).  The temple I stayed at is near the entrance to the town at the second bus stop. Regenjo-in is a beautiful establishment.  I was greeted by two mo

Check this out.  Part of the bathroom heater is heated.... So that when you get out of the shower you can still see yourself!  Though luckily not all of you ;-) Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

1.  I have seen more cats than dogs on the streets of the city. 2.  Tokyo is clean - very little garbage on the streets (only visible in the early morning), few cigarette butts and no freaking gum wads stuck to sidewalks.  No graffiti either.  Anywhere. 3.  I have seen some homelessness, especially around Ueno, but no panhandling. 4.  What they say about making slurping sounds when eating noodles is true!  Slurp...LOUDLY. 5.  Those Pachinko Slot businesses are loud and brightly lit, holy cow.  A flood of noise comes out when the automatic sliding doors to one of those shops opens up and the street floods with white fluorescent light 6.  Dental Floss is real expensive for those small 50 yard boxes - 598 Yen 7.  People don't lock their bikes when they go into a shop 9.  People jay-walk - I found that surprising given my stereotypical view of the law abiding Japanese 10.  Seven year old kids walk or bike to school alone. 11.  Passengers are asked to not talk on their mobiles on the Ya

After four nights in Kyoto it was time to head a little further out.  I grabbed the local JR train that heads northwest, the Sagano Line.  My first of two stops was at the Hanazono Station.  From there I walked to the Kinkaku-ji temple one of three World Heritage Sites that you can visit in this area. Kinkaku dates from the 14th Century and gets its name from the main building on the site - the Golden Pavilion.  The original is no longer standing and what you see is a 1955 version.  It was burned down numerous times (twice during the Onin War of the late 15th Century and more recently, in 1950, by a deranged monk!).  The building is almost completely covered in gold-leaf.  It makes for quite the site on the edge of a pond. I then walked on to another World Heritage Site - the Ryoan-ji Temple.  It's claim to fame is its dry landscape rock garden.  It is believed to have been built in the late 15th Century and is one of the world's most famous.  Seeing it in a peaceful environmen

This country never ceases to amaze me.  It is a wonderful place to visit....it truly is.  One morning during my stay in Kyoto I took the JR Nara Line for two stations (five minutes) from Kyoto and got off at Inari.  This is the site of one of Shinto shrine that you may very likely have seen pictures of.  It is an Inari shrine meaning that it is built in honour of the god of rice and sake.  Inari shrines are unique from other Shinto shrines for two reasons.  One is that their entrances are guarded by foxes (which the Japanese believe can possess a human).  Secondly their entrances are marked by numerous torii (the gates that grace entrances of Shinto shrines).  This particular shrine is called the Fushimi Inari-Taisha Shrine and has, according to a man I met in one of the shops in the complex, more than 30,000 torii gates.  The complex is, as is often the case, in a naturally beautiful area.  This one is built in hills and has over four kilometre of trails in it.  Almost every metre of

I had a fantastic morning today.  Fantastic.  As usual I woke up early and was out the door by about 7am.  I had decided to visit the northern part of the Higashiyama of Kyoto.  Higashiyama is the area in the eastern foothills of Kyoto.  It took me almost two hours to walk there but it was a beautiful morning and I feel there is no better way to get to know a place then to walk it.  I walked along the banks of the Kamo River and through residential areas on northeastern Kyoto. My destination was the Ginkaku-ji Temple.  This is one of Kyoto's many World Heritage Sites, and with good reason.  It dates from the late 15th Century and has the most beautiful garden I have yet to see...anywhere.  It is a zen garden and I walked through it twice because I could not get enough of it.  It has carpets of a wide variety of different mosses.  The sand/gravel gardens are immaculate and perfect.  The Japanese maple trees had also started turning their fiery reds.   Unfortunately the temple buildi

Yes Kamakura has all of these in a pretty compact area. This city has a population of 455,000 and is near the Sea of Japan. For a city of half a million it has the feel of a larger place. It has a vibrant and large shopping district, glamorous boutiques, large department stores, a beautiful museum of contemporary art and it even has its version of Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing called, here, the Katamachi Scramble....though I wonder if the locals call it that - the guide books do. I spent one and a half days here and again did a fair bit of walking. My first afternoon and evening was in an area called the Nagamachi District. It was once inhabited by samurai and some of these homes have been well preserved with mud walls and tiled roofs. The streets are narrow and, in the evenings, nicely lit and quiet. On one of the streets, in a corner, is a great pottery store called Kaburaki that was established in 1822....worth the visit. Just to the east of this area I walked along a street that

Travelling to Takayama from Nikko was a trek but it went smooth as silk. The Nikko Line brought me to Utsunomiya. From there I grabbed the shinkansen to Tokyo and grabbed another to Nagoya. Then I jumped on the line that heads north to Toyama which serves Takayama. This last segment is spectacular as the tracks follow a river north, crossing over it many times. This river has cut a gorge into the rock and is fast flowing enough to be used for hydroelectricity as is evident by the many generation stations I saw. There are also numerous tunnels and, when not buried in one, great views of the mountains. At one point I saw a red torii gate whiz by, feet from the track, marking the entrance of a small shrine. Takayama is a village of 95,000. It straddles Miya-gawa (Miya River) where it meets Enako-gawa. The entire village is walkable and no sites are more than thirty minutes or so from anywhere else. Two of Takayama’s main sites are districts that contain houses that are reminiscent

To date I have taken nine intercity trains in Japan (excluding the many commuter trains in Tokyo). Here are a few things that have struck me, although they don’t surprise me given all I had heard and read over the years. I guess they just prove the facts and further show how engrained respect for people and property is in this beautiful country. 1) The Shinkansen that I rode on from Tokyo to Nagoya pulled in from some other part of Japan at my platform about 15 minutes before the scheduled 12:33 departure - although right on time for its arrival from wherever it was arriving from. It emptied itself of its passengers and the ladies clad in pink took over. They boarded, closed the doors of the cars and got to work. We were lined up outside and watched the show through the windows. Here is what they accomplished in 15 minutes in a train that was 12 cars long. -turned all the chairs around to face in the other direction (our train was going to head back the way it came) -removed th

I spent a day and a half in Nikko October 28 and 29th.  It is a village of 95,000 people north of Tokyo.  To get here I took the bullet train from Ueon Station in Tokyo to Utsunomiya Station.  There I switched to a local train line called the Nikko Line.  In all it took about an hour and forty minutes of travel time. Nikko is situated in a valley with a river called the Daiya-gawa running through it.  It really is a rushing stream.  In fact, every where in Nikko you here rushing water.  Whether it is the Daiya itself or the numerous other streams that are all rushing rapidly down to meet the Daiya.  Most streets have narrow stone culverts on either side and you can see the rushing water (or hear it when they are covered).  It is a nice sound that drowns out other man-made ones. Forests.  The valley that Nikko is built in has some fantastic forests.  The trees are immense.  They look like cedars to me based on the stringy bark.  One thing for sure is that they are in fact big.  Many of