A few more pictures of Kyoto...

More Kyoto pics. I'll only describe a few of them. Red leaves don't need much of a description.



I took this one because the guy is sweeping the forest. Kyoto must hire hundreds or maybe thousands of people to sweep leaves off the forest floor.
This is the Nijo-jou castle inside Kyoto. I believe that it belonged to one of the Shogun's and was then given to the Emperor to live in before he was allowed to move to Tokyo.


Kyoto station. Some pretty amazing architecture going on in this building. Amazing.

This was the front of the Battleship Yamato. Not the real one of course but the size is 1:1. They used it in filming of the movie Yamato I believe.


Kyoto station again. The steps are pretty breathtaking. There's sort of an open air garden up on the roof.

The next pictures are all from Ginkaku-ji I believe. I really like the sunlight in the first one-it was exactly the effect I was going for.

Monthly update (with Kyoto pics!)

Well I'm finally get some Kyoto pics put up. I still haven't printed any out yet. Well I printed one but that was for a Christmas present *wink*. I had a good time in Kyoto. It was what I imagined it would be-lots of temples and shrines. I don't really go crazy for these types of things but it was certainly interesting. And the famed kouyou (changing of the leaves) was nice but can't even begin to compare to looking out at Beaver Valley from Old Baldy in my honest opinion. The first two days were quite good and then on the third day I fell sick with food poisoning. I powered through the first two of three items on the itinerary but after that I couldn't go on and we changed our shinkansen tickets to an earlier time and came home.

I'm in a bit of a funk right now so getting a Christmas present from home this evening when I got home was certainly a welcome surprise! I won't open it till Christmas I promise. I don't remember missing last Christmas too much but this year is hitting home a little more hard. I'm listening to Christmas carols right now. All the good old fashioned stuff. O Holy Night, Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing etc. A shame kids can't grow up listening to it in schools these days. The Christmas assemblies must pale in comparison to the olden days.

I have to work on Christmas Eve again. And Christmas Day. Bleh. And the weather is cooold. It was a balmy 11 degrees Celcius in our house when I woke up this morning. No wonder I'm in a funk! Christmas/NOVA/weather is pulling a 1-2-3 punch on me!

Hopefully I'll be getting out some Christmas cards this year. I'm not sure if you can buy them by the box like you can at home. I don't have any addresses though so if you want a Christmas card from Japan then make sure you get your address to Mom! And if you don't know how to do that then you obviously don't know me well enough to get a Christmas card!

And now the moment you've all been waiting for! The pictures! I took these pictures BIG so you 56kers (the Sparling family) might be well advised to not click on any of them.



First one is me with an actor in a sort of action samurai drama we went to. He sort of walked out into the audience and started talking to them and then he started talking to me! In English! And of course I like to blend in with the crowd so I almost died. He got me up and Fumiko to a picture with him.

I'm afraid I can't tell you the name of this place. It had lots of really red leaves though.


This is the same place.

This is called ginkakuji (I assume the Silver Pavillion). It's walls used to be coated in silver. A very beautiful place.



And this is its more beautiful sister kinkakuji (the Golden Pavillion). It's walls are STILL covered in gold!



This is obviously a very old train. Kind of cool to ride on.



I'll try posting a few more pictures later!

Miscellanea

I'm kind of kicking myself for not buying a PS3. I could have at least resold it on Ebay for twice the cost. Oh well, sometimes having too much common sense can be a disadvantage.

Fumiko just returned today from Kyoto where she attended her brother's wedding. That brought up a couple of (possibly cultural?) incongruities. For one, Fumiko had never even met her brother's wife until she arrived in Kyoto. In fact I don't think she even knew her name until she heard that they were getting married. And then when I asked if I was invited to the wedding, she looked at me as if I had two heads. I thought it was only natural that you would take your boyfriend of approximately eight or nine months (at that time) to a wedding with you. But perhaps not. I was happy to not have to pay the $250 train ticket to Kyoto.

I managed to get hold of a poppy at the Canadian Embassy before Remembrance Day. I wore it a couple of days to work. I was a little worried whether I might stir up some controversy (it really shouldn't-the poppy after all is from the First World War) but shockingly enough in my classes nobody even mentioned it. I was a little upset actually. I mean, I had a freakin flower on my chest and yet nobody could be bothered to be curious as to why.