January 2003

January 27, 2003

Laura and I went to Nanzen-ji yesterday morning to take part in a Zen meditation session. It was pretty amazing, although Laura was pretty alarmed when the monk brought out the enormous stick for whacking people. We escaped unscathed, luckily.

I did realize, however, that even though Nanzen-ji is one of my favourite temples in the city, I don't have a page up for it yet...I'm currently working to rectify the situation. We went there on the 'snow day' and took some pretty fabulous pictures. Look for that page soon.

I also found out that my Aikido dojo will be doing some sort of mountain retreat / purification ritual or some such thing in the mountains North of Kyoto...in Kurama to be exact. I think I'm going to go, but I have to find out what exactly it entails. From what I gather we'd be spending the night in the temple, which would be really interesting.

January 22, 2003

The pictures are up from our visit to Mount Fuji, so please feel free to check them out.

After a number of false starts (of which this is potentially another) I've started on a new writing project...I'm writing about our experiences over here in Japan. Quite a lot of interesting stuff has happened to us since we've been here, and I've decided to compile it into a book, for better or for worse. I'll keep you all posted.

January 21, 2003

Yesterday I had an interesting visit from an unusually persistent salesperson from NHK, Japan's national broadcaster. I was only able to get rid of him after insisting that I spoke no Japanese, was partially blind in both eyes, owned no television and was moving to Kenya the next day. Clearly frustrated, and not entirely believing that I didn't own a TV set (I think I had him convinced about my poor vision, as I felt his face for about a minute asking 'who is it? who is it?") he left me with an English pamphlet and grudgingly took his leave.

The reason that he was presumptuously acting like I owed him something was that, well, technically under some ridiculous Japanese law, I did. Apparently, here in the land of mega-monopolies, anyone who owns a TV set capable of receiving a television signal is required by law to pay a subscription fee. In fact, if you are to buy or sell your TV, you are required to immediately notify NHK Corp. This, of course, does not take into account the fact that Japanese television is abominable, and that I would rather use my hard-earned money (of which they would like about $20 a month) as toilet paper.

Luckily, I was not so dumbfounded as to not be able to act appropriately. I quickly ran and caught up with the NHK saleseman and was sure to throw him down at least one flight of stairs.

January 15, 2003

Ommigosh! A snow day! This is way too exciting. Just yesterday, Laura and I were hiking through the mountains, and today we wake up to a fluffy blanket of snow over all of the rooftops....and that can mean only one thing: copious amounts of sightseeing. We're off to Nanzen-ji, The Path of Philosophy and The Silver Pavilion; all highlights on snowy days. Hopefully pictures will help to convey just how beautiful it is here right now.

January 14, 2003

I had lunch on top of a mountain yesterday, overlooking a peaceful horseshoe valley just north of our apartment. Faced with the possibility of moving to Tokyo, Laura and I have decided to try and make the most of Kyoto while we're here. That entails a lot of hiking. Today we're taking a mountain trail that leads into a Zen temple district, and one of our next goals is to take a second crack at Daigo.

Totally surrounded by mountains, Kyoto is actually a fabulous place for hiking, with innumerable trails and paths just about anywhere you would care to go. One of my goals is to climb Mt. Hie, where the warlord Oda Nobunaga sent his armies to humble the emboldened Buddhist clergy. Hundreds of temples were burned to the ground, among them the temple in our neighbourhood, Bishamon-do. It's really amazing being able to hike through such historic areas.

January 10, 2003

I have put up the beginnings of a Tokyo page, if only so that I can go ahead and put together some other pages that I've been anxious to do (Fuji and Himeji). The Tokyo page is, predictably, fairly unsatisfactory, but given the challenge one faces in trying to sum up a city like Tokyo in one page, I suppose (hope!) it is understandable. Consider it, then, a work in progress...and if our transfers go through, expect to see Tokyo in as much detail as you've seen Kyoto.

For now, keep your eyes open for some breathtaking pictures of Mount Fuji and Japan's greatest castle, Himeji.

By means of a preview, feel free to use this amazing shot that Laura took with her new digital camera as a background image on your puter.

January 6, 2003

Well, as I suspected, the last few days have been filled with trips as well. The other day we visited Kyoto's Heian Shrine, which was filled to capacity with Japanese observing their first shrine visit of the New Year. We also checked out a museum of contemporary and traditional Japanese art.

Yesterday we made the much anticipated trip out to Himeji to see Himeji-jo, which is one of the most famed castles in Japan. The day, however, turned out to be more of an adventure than I had anticipated, both for me and my camera. We had just left the train station when I realized that I had left my camera case on the luggage rack in the train, which had been turning around immediately for another trip.

To make a long story short, after notifying Japan Rail about my gaffe, I found that after travelling for over 3.5 hours on the train, my camera had ended up in Northern Shiga Prefecture. Shocked that nobody had stolen my gear, I hastily made tracks that evening to pick it up in what appeared to me to be Japan's version of Siberia. Laura and I joked that given the cameras most people seem to have here, someone probably did steal the bag, and then seeing that it was an older model, turned it in.

Himeji-jo was amazing, though. Good timing for Laura to get a camera!

January 3, 2003

Well, here we are in the new year...the Year of the Sheep. Laura and I got back from our trip last night...luckily. We came within one minute of not being able to get home, and by sheer luck managed to catch a connecting train that kept us from being stranded in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

The reason we ran a little behind is because, as you can see above, we got a little distracted by Fuji-san. Seeing it from the train, we were compelled to jump off the train (when it stopped) and head for the mountain. More on that later...

Tokyo was absolutely incredible, and I think we're both in love. The city has become more than simply a city; it's a phenomenon. Each area hums with a life of its own, and even though quieter than usual - because of the holiday season - Tokyo was alive with a vibrancy I've never seen anywhere else.

Having made the visit, Laura and I are more resolved than ever to move to Tokyo. While Kyoto is an incredible place and is, in itself, a cultural treasure, Tokyo is a thriving, pulsating altar to the gods of modernity (hee, hee...one could go on, getting more and more dramatic about the whole thing, I imagine...but in short, Tokyo was cool.) The whole experience made Laura and I see Japan in an entirely different light, and gave us the opportunity to compare directly the two cities that best sum up the Japanese condition.

Well, today I am going to get my film developed, and hopefully get some details of the trip and our impressions up on the site. (insert impromptu dialogue here)

Faithful Reader: "Hold fast, Sir Aaron. If not to the developer you have been, whence cometh Fuji-san's image I have seen?"

Aaron: "Well, my Faithful Reader, Laura caught the Akihabara sickness...yes, lowly geek that I am, I dragged Laura to look at electronics, but it was not I who succumbed to the charms of Akihabara."

FR: "Pray tell, what is this 'Akihabara' of which you speak?"

(End increasingly cheesy dialogue) In short, we went to Tokyo's electronics district to humour me, and we walked out with a digital camera. We'd actually been planning on doing something of the sort...and what better time and place? So now Laura has a new, very fun toy.

So, I will try and get things together on the page here, although I have the feeling that our last few days of vacation are about to be gobbled up by some sort of off-the-cuff trip somewhere (I can see Laura scouring the tour books now). Either way, fun details will be forthcoming.

Happy New Year!