Living it up at the Hotel Gansuiji...

This is a bit of a leftover topic I never got around to reporting on because of all the excitement with people visiting in April. There is a local temple called Gansuiji that is famous for praying for new babies and ceremonies for good luck for new infants. You can even pay them about $50 to choose your child's name for you- I am sure it is a great honour for some families, but I tend to think part of the fun of having a baby is coming up with the name. We went there in early April, to pray for good luck for our future child as we aren't spring chickens and we thought it doesn't hurt to play it safe. Well unfortunately they said that we should come back around the 5 month mark- it was too early for them to offer their prayers.
The temple is located on the side of my old enemy- Forest Park and so the entire scenery surrounding the temple is quite beautiful. Here a statue suggests a well traveled man arriving at the temple (although this is only my interpretation).
In the outlying area there stands this weather- ravished looking old hut. It brings me to wondering how this thing was still standing, looks like if you breathe too heavily it will topple.
I saw an interesting place that I wanted a picture of, so I returned there a few weeks later to take the picture.
Turns out to have been a great choice as when I returned the Cherry blossoms were in full bloom lending even more beauty to this quiet little area.
I found this hotel immensely interesting with it's all cement decor making it look like something out of a Stephen King movie. The sad fact is that it was probably a poor business idea as it looks like it's a long time closed now.

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!

Ni jo no-no

My mother and Aunt actually arrived here a little earlier than I saw them. They had about 6 days worth of tours between Tokyo and Kyoto through JTB tour. I chatted with them on the first day and then unsuccessfully tried to call them at their hotels for the last 4 days of their tour. On the day before meeting with them, I was getting worried when I tried to call the hotel in Kyoto at 8 pm and they hadn't checked in yet. I needed to talk to them as I was meeting them in Kyoto in order to guide them back to Hamamatsu on the regular train ( I had a discount ticket the seishun juuhachi kippu that gave me 5 day passes for 8000 yen- this year was a special price!). Well I did some detective work after a while and found that their tour that day would have them arriving late in Kyoto. My wife left a message for them at check in and we finally got in contact.
At the last minute I decided that it might be a good idea for me to track down a hotel to stay in and I found the mitsui garden hotel shijo. The hotel was a little more than I wanted to pay, but comfortable and conveniently located. I arrived a bit early after stopping off in Nagoya and visiting my pals in the Nagoya office for the company I work for, Time/Life Zenken- so I tried to go site seeing nearby and picked Nijo-jo to visit.
To my chagrin after taking the two or three pictures I could from across the way, I found out the castle closed at 4 o'clock! I had just checked in at 4- oh well, a future visit I suppose. Instead I wondered the popular shopping district around Karasuma/Shijo and was impressed with how many shops there were.
Finally it was about 6 o'clock and I found my way to the Nikko Princess hotel where Cathy and Liz were staying.
The ladies both were a bit tired after a hectic schedule of touring, but after a quick freshen up were ready to find some dinner.
My mom-
Aunt Liz...
We headed back to Shijo and found a restaurant/izakaya called Kyoto dining (or something like that)- and had a surprisingly delicious dinner- but no, we didn't eat tofu there!
The first day was brief but a good and interesting start to the ladies visit with us!

Princesses and Cherry Blossoms

The roof of Sakura added a nice bit of atmosphere to the festival
On the weekend after teaching my Sunday class I headed out to Kiga, Hosoe to watch the hime sama douchu matsuri. This was my second time going to the festival but I still managed to really enjoy it. I always enjoy going to the Japanese festivals or special events. There is always a sort of carnival atmosphere, probably I get that feeling seeing all the food kiosks or the children happily scooping goldfish.

We started out by going to a nice Unagi restaurant called Hikifune, then we had to move our car about 2 kms out of the way to park. From there we could catch a shuttle bus back to the festival.
On the walk from the shuttle bus I saw something I hadn't seen before, they have built a recreation of the checkpoint that used to stand on the Hime sama road in eras past. It was quite lovely and a nice touch - last time I had gone, I was looking for the original checkpoint that had been destroyed a long time ago, and all I could find was a small sign.
We sat along the main pathway and enjoyed the viewing of the cherry blossoms- or hanami. Actually for me, I have always been a people watcher so I took in the crowd and the view and chatted with my students. It was very relaxing.
Finally the parade found its way onto the path and we could see the princess. She actually is not a real princess, every year there is a contest for a young lady to play the role, but I was impressed, the young lady smiled princessly and was quite beautiful!
To cap it all off, the princess and her posse made it to the center stage and performed a lovely dance for us all to enjoy!
It was a nice afternoon.