My picks for the top 10 posts from 2007

One of the great things about keeping a blog is that there is a quick reference of the things that happen in our lives. Though it turned out to be quite time consuming (mental note, shorter posts) it was quite interesting to see the highs and lows of the year. A lot happened and it's always tough to say one post is better than another, but I tried my hardest.All you need to do is click on the title to relive each memory with me (and then the back button on your browser to continue on), here we go;

To Start we'll go with my pick for the worst post of 2007;

A Normal Post While it was actually a pretty special post, it was the first time I mentioned the imminent arrival of Ken, I also thought it would be funny to do up a picture in Photoshop combining elements or Ritsy's face and my face (and my nephew Mac's body). The end result was like Frankenstein's monster and probably severely traumatized some readers. So, it gets the worst of 2007 award.

Now the best picks;
10. A funny thing Fracturing your leg while playing basketball is not what many would consider good news to break (ouch! pun not intentional)- but this makes the list because of its relevance to my life. It was a pretty monumental happening!

9. A concert There was a few good party posts last year. A couple with Manami and Tet-chan's family and a couple at my student Josh's house. This one makes the list because it was quite a nice and unique musical show with a fantastic setting! Later Josh gave me a CD with the recording of the performance- a great touch.

8. Japanese Beauty At times I have been known to ramble. But every now and then a pearl of wisdom comes from this tendency. Japanese Beauty is very beautiful and speaks of the ways in which I appreciate Japanese culture- I can't believe that it was actually I that wrote it!

7. Princesses and Cherry Blossoms A nice post simply because of some beautiful pictures. 'nuff said.

6. Pete and Mari's wedding At the beginning of last year Pete and Mari had their wedding party locally. It was really interesting time and there was some nice pictures.

5. Lillooet This was my second Lillooet posting but I liked this one a little better as I took a little more of a humorous approach in recounting my story. Though some of the humour may be better understood if you read the first one too. And it really does look like the tv is eating him I think....

4. The Tokyo Series As there were a few series this year I tried to pick the best post from each group. The first was the trip to Tokyo. I picked this one because of the pictures of the old Kabuki theater in Ginza that apparently will be torn down. Beautiful looking building though.
3. Ise Another of my trips this year back in August. Man it was hot- and Ritsy was having a bit of the morning sickness still on the boat- but it was a great couple of days up there- and it's just great to explore Japan really. My choice had my favorite pictures from Ise, though I was actually torn between this one and the old shopping street.

2. Aunt and Mom's Visit Sorry ladies, you will have to settle for second place! It was awesome to show the ladies around Japan a bit, and selfishly I was able to see a lot of stuff I haven't seen before. There were actually a lot of great pictures from the series- but I'll go with my favorite location Todaiji- the home of the great Buddha in Nara. Honorable mentions go out to Kohfukuji and Hatasan in Fukuroi.
1. Ken Of course the arrival of your baby- especially your first is just a special moment- and I took a lot of time and recorded the events leading up to his birth quite nicely.

There it is the highlights of my blog world for 2007.

Now it's time to build a new year of memories.

The Journey Through Aunt Liz's eyes

In selecting the picture highlights from Aunt Liz's pictures I was challenged with an even bigger selection of pictures and there were some great pictures from before they met with me, but as I can't comment on the places, I thought it better to start from when we met up with them. I also wanted to show some new views, so some of the better pictures I may have skipped as they are similar to the ones I have already shown.

Aunt Liz has a great love for plants and nature and they show in the pictures. Where my pictures tend to focus on the architecture that I find quite interesting, she is always framing hers with plants of some sort or other. The lead picture is quite indicative of this trait, a sakura and another tree frame the main entrance. I am not sure where this was taken though.
This site came to us while walking to the Nara Hotel, a shop owner feeding a deer. It was our first deer siting of many.
Here the ladies, Ritsy and Cathy, and I are checking out the information of the outlying area framed by a Cherry blossom tree and Kofukuji showing in the background.

Outside the entrance of Todaiji, tree and more cherry blossoms.

My car- we progressed back to Hamamatsu and Liz snapped this picture of the interior of my car. I rather like the picture, you can see the new shopping center, Sun Street in the distance, and of course the unique center console of the Vitz.

Next up some more pics from Hama town from Liz's eyes.

The journey through Cathy's eyes part 2

In continuing with a look at my mom's pictures from the trip out to Japan back in April, I will continue flush in the middle of the trip to Nara. These two frogs, while I am sure they have some sort of religious meaning as they are at Shinyakushiji temple, but I think they are just cute.
Here my mom captures quite nicely the unique apparel the young ladies wore at Kasuga Taisha. I believe the flower is called a Wisteria or something like that...
She rather shiftily captured this picture of Ritsy and I waiting at the shinkansen station. Quite underhanded of her, but I liked the picture anyway...
Jumping ahead to our trip to the caves up north, I thought this picture captured well the enclosed grandiose ambiance of the caves.
And finally I have this picture of the front of the caves being guarded by the dragon.

Unfortunately that was as far along as the pictures from her that I have runs, but I still enjoyed to go back and to revisit the memories of early spring, borrowing her eyes! Oh finally, me and some turtles back in Nara.

The journey through Cathy's eyes - part 1

It's sometimes interesting to go back through someone else's pictures and see the views and vantages that they had taken from the same places you have gone. It's incredibly interesting as in some ways people's personality and interests bleed through into their photos and almost give us a fresh perspective on something we have already been through. I recently started going through my mom's pictures from her April visit and I picked out 10 of my favorite pics that I will post over the next two postings. In the above picture, you can see Risy, My Aunt Liz and I standing on the steps up to Kofukuji.
We saw this shop where they would make mochi right in front of our eyes. They apparently were a little bit famous from Nara and had appeared on a few popular Japanese TV programs. It was quite the show, I am surprised there isn't more businesses that are run like this.
This beautiful picture comes from one of the many gardens we visited in Nara- sorry I have already forgotten the name of it. Here my mother has quite masterfully caught a beautiful blend of green nature contrasted with the wooden railing and the very Japanese looking house.
I had a similar shot to this one, the garden with the Todaiji temple peaking out over the tree tops. This picture is equally as beautiful and visually pleasing.
One of the personality traits that were apparent her pictures was her interest in the beautiful manhole covers- it was tough to pick one that stood out, so I decided not to use one here. Another thing that held Cathy's attention was the Japanese cemeteries so she was quite excited about these graves on the way up to Byakugoji temple. Turned into quite an interesting picture too...
More tomorrow...

Kasuga Taisha (I'm back!)

I have spent the last 4-5 days in Tokyo (which I will get back to a little later- sorry for the backlog but it's fun to actually have something to blog about) so haven't been blogging, but I will continue with my tail of entertaining my mother and Aunt in the middle of last month.

On our last day we at least had a chance to visit the last World Heritage spot that is within Nara Park, Kasuga Taisha. Regrettably, I can't find the handout about the shrine- but it proved capable of matching the pure cleanliness, serenity and beauty of the other places we had managed to visit in our quick two day journey.
The ladies working at the Kasuga Taisha all wore a strange attire, that doesn't turn up so well in this picture, but it was definitely quite unique and piqued my interest. They wore wisteria in their hair, apparently the Wisteria tree is quite important to the shrine.

The shrine is also well-known for the many lanterns that hang around, they have been donated by worshippers throughout the years. Here is a beautiful young lady surrounded by the lanterns.
As we finished up there, we picked up our bags and strolled back to the station, it was time to say goodbye to Nara, and time for the ladies to get to know the Hamamatsu area.

Byakugoji and Sin Yakushiji

My plan had been to follow the sites listed as World Heritage sites in the map that we had been given at Nara station. Somehow in my calculations I had picked the wrong place, and we ended up making a trek to byakugoji.

By this time our feet were already starting to ache so we took the bus a ways and were then tasked with climbing a long stairway to the temple. These stairs though, did help us to
realize one of the charming points of this quaint little temple, the view of Nara city. The temple also holds an image of King Emma- a particularly fierce looking god (who unfortunately I was not permitted to photograph- but another gaijin didn't pay attention to the signs, so I stole it from his blog)
The way down is always much easier, and the view is whited out a bit in this picture.
As if our feet hadn't been punished enough, we had to make our way back either to the bus or walk back to the hotel from there. As either one involved a bit of a walk, we (sorry mom and aunt Liz!) decided to walk. We used signs pointing towards Shinyakushiji for our bearing and ended up going into the temple.
Shinyakushiji was founded in the Tempyo period (747 ad) and is said to be the only remaining build from that era in it's original condition (source- pamphlet given at site). The main Buddha shown inside the main building (Yakushi- the patron of medicine) is a national treasure.
Also housed inside the main building shown above were 12 divine generals, beautiful wood carved statues, each one representing one of the 12 chinese zodiac years. I quickly found Mouse and said thanks to him (because he represents the year I was born...)
It was a beautiful and serene setting and I thought a fitting end to a busy day of checking out Nara's beauty. We rested/soaked our feet and had a nice Italian dinner in town (took the bus both ways) and fell asleep quite easily to get ready for our last temples to view and our trip home.

Todaiji

After leaving the gardens we made our way to the site of the Big Buddha- Daibutsu --Todaiji unfortunately showing a picture does no justice to the sheer scale of the building that the Buddha is housed in. If you look closely at the above picture, you can see the little dots in front of the building- those dots are people. To stand before such an enormous structure is awe inspiring and surreal at the same time. That matched with the clean look and peaceful atmosphere made it a beautiful experience.
Ritsy showing her approval helps a little bit with the scale.
The Walkway is flanked with Korean boxwoods and the typical Japanese architecture. Here I was trying to capture the gold (what do you call it?) rising behind the wall.
Another case of "I can't do justice to the sheer size of this thing in a picture". Trust me, this guy is huge!
After enjoying the beauty of the daibutsu. we stopped to check out this curiously garbed statue. This statue is said to have healing powers, by rubbing a part of the statue and then rubbing the same spot on your body, he will cure your ailments. We, of course, all tried to heal our aching legs, feet and butts with marginal results. Maybe we didn't leave enough money for him?

The next leg, museums and gardens

We set out the next day, our hearts full of adventure and wonder. We started out into Nara park and Ritsy leaped at the opportunity to teach the deer the difference between a book and a piece of sembe.
The first destination was the Nara museum which had a number of interesting buddha sculptures and some ancient tea kettles and the sort that spoke of an incredible attention to a love of art and of the buddhist gods. Some of the old artifacts were quite reminiscent of the North American Native's art that hints of ancestral links...? We were unable to take pictures in the museum and it was too bad as there was a special ceremony that day that is held only twice a year. The local monks come into the museum to pray for all the statues in the museum, they chanted a long and hypnotic sutra while some of the monks walked around the main floor.
Upon departing the museum, we stumbled across a small temple that I never knew the name of. Though not of the spectacular variety, it was still quite beautiful with the sakura trees in bloom.
As my aunt has a great love of gardening and was teaching us a lot about the flowers and trees, we decided to go to a couple of Japanese gardens that were right next to each other, Yoshikien and Isuien gardens. The above pictured flower was quite beautiful but I forgot the name, so for now I will call it a Toddus Spectacularis flower. Both gardens showed a great attention to care and detail and were both beautiful and relaxing. As I have a horrible memory for flower names, I did not take many pictures and could not identify the flowers that I did. I will point out how restful the gardens were....
... This garden had a room for resting and a place for resting.
And finally in Isuien garden there was a moment of foreshadowing as we had a glimpse of our next destination... Todaiji.

Kohfukuji

The first temple that we visited in Nara was Kohfukuji. The temple was originally erected in roughly 669 AD to pray for the illness of then statesman Fujiwara no Kamatari. The temple had been moved around a couple of times finally settling in it's current location in the middle of the capital of Nara. It grew to be one of the Four Great Temples of the Nara period and subsequently one of the Seven Great Temples of the Heian era. The temple lost a lot of it's power over the years but the great Tokugawa Ieyasu had tried to rebuild it's power by sending lots of rice to them that allowed them to rebuild many buildings. To this day it is the main HQ for the Hosso sect (Buddhist).

The more interesting buildings upon our arrival seemed to be the pagodas. The first one we witnesses was the 3 story pagoda- the original was built in 1143, but the current building was built in the Kamakura era(1185-1333). Inside is said to be wood paintings.
There is also a 5 story pagoda which is quite large to look at, indeed it is the second highest pagoda in Japan standing at 50.1 meters(according to the pamphlet received upon entrance).
Around the grounds many of the famous Nara deer had made their way...
It was our first chance to feed the deer which I quite enjoyed, they all seem to make a Japanese style bow when asking for the sembe (or fried rice cake). The male deer are a little more aggressive and will nudge you in the behind if you don't feed them or they will just follow you around. One deer thought the book that Ritsy was holding (a nice picture book of the sites of Nara that she was given for free at the temple) was sembe and tried to eat it. Here she is showing off the bitten book.
This was our first temple, and we might have been a bit tired from our journey so we didn't fully check out the entire area, but I thought it was an interesting and pleasant start.

Nara hotel

The day after getting to Kyoto, we all checked out and made the 4 hour journey back to Hamamatsu on the Toukaido line. Upon arriving back home, I had about an hour to relax, then had to go to teach the Tuesday night class. I was surprised I was actually not too tired though I think I was making some bad jokes...

The next day, I knew the ladies were tired so we all just relaxed and saved our energy for the next day's trip to Nara that Ritsy and I had arranged.

The morning of the trip we weren't too rushed and were able to make it out to Hamamatsu station at a leisurely pace and we made the trek by shinkansen to Kyoto, then by local train to Nara. I could see that Ritsy and my mother like sleeping on trains....
After arriving we were told that it takes about 20 minutes to walk to the hotel we were staying at, the Nara hotel, but it felt more like 30-40 minutes. When we finally arrived though, it was well worth the trek...
The hotel on the outside looked like a classic Japanese building through and through, the entry way was quite beautiful I thought.
From the back of the hotel next to the street, you had a great view of the pagoda from Kofukuji (next blog entry)...
The restaurant at the hotel was pretty expensive so we chose to find some places to eat locally. The first days lunch we enjoyed the joys of Mos burger, and for dinner we had a great little teishoku style set meal at a cafe located just across the street from the hotel- Here Ritsy helps my mom choose from the menu.
The hotel definitely did not disappoint and was a great base from which to enjoy this delightful little town!