Kyoto - Day Two

Okay, my turn today. As you can imagine, Deana and I are tearing across the city trying our best to see as many things as possible since we only have three days here in Kyoto. The reason Kyoto is famous is, as Deana said, it is the ancient capital of Japan. It is famous for being filled with temples, shrines, scenery, and history. We have taken so many photos and had a ton of fun - it is a shame we can't share them all with you, but hopefully you can get a small taste of what we are experiencing through our photos and stories.

We started out the day by going to the "Golden Pavilion". This is a three story temple that supposedly has the founder of Buddhism's ashes in it. The top two stories are covered in gold leaf. You couldn't go up to the building (I assume for obvious reasons).

From there, we went to Tenryuji Temple. I don't know the significance of this one, but it was pretty. It had a garden behind it that was on some sort of ancient historical registry (surely most all of these places are, right?)


We left the temple and found ourself in a bamboo forest. It was almost entirely bamboo and we found it amazing to see how much sunlight did not make it through to the ground in the thick part of the forest.


After the bamboo, we had the coolest experience of the day. Iwatayama Park, a.k.a. Monkey Park, with free roaming monkeys. Eventhough we just saw wild monkeys two days ago in Hiroshima, this was a very different experience. You could go into a fenced area and buy food to feed the animals. They hung on the outside of the fence and reached through to grab the peanuts, apples, or sweet potatoes. We captured some of it on video for your enjoyment.

Avery feeding the Monkeys (click to play)

Avery feeding the monkeys some more (click to play)

There were also signs that said "do not stare at the monkeys".

Click here to find out why.
It's a shame that the first thing I did was turn off the camera. Had I kept recording, you would have seen me being chased down the trail by a monkey and heard me apologizing to it. Of course in my panic, I was apologizing in English - I forgot these monkeys are Japanese.

We finished up the day going to Fushimi Inari Shrine. This was an area that had thousands of toriis. Toriis are the "gate" that mark the beginning of a sacred area. You typically find them at the front of temples and/or shrines. They went a little overboard here though.



I'll finish the post with some miscellaneous photos that we collected today. I hope this doesn't cause the web page to load to slowly, but since pictures are worth a thousand words, it easier for me to paste a few photos...

I was in "stealth mode" for this one...

Lazy Geisha Girls...



A park employee was feeding this guy peanuts and letting folks squat behind them for photo ops. (free of charge - WHOO HOO!)

We saw so many girls in kimonos today that we finally stopped and asked if we could take a photo of them with Avery.

More monkey photos. Notice how high we are above the city. We started out at that level. It was a 20 minute hike straight up, but it was worth it.

Kyoto Night One

Today we caught the bullet train at 10:06am and headed out to Kyoto. For those of you who don't know, Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan many many many years ago. We were able to go see one temple, the Kiyomizu (key o me zoo) Temple and then we retreated to the hotel to form our game plan for the remaining days.

Tonight we went to an Italian restaurant on the 10th floor of the hotel. Needless to say, it was a little fancy. Avery and I had a $10.00 plate of spaghetti (each) that was as big as my hand and Curtis had the "Chef's Tasting Special" for $30.00. Yes....his contained some unidentifiable things. I did try octopus tonight....too chewy for me..of course Curtis will eat anything that doesn't bite him first. Here are a few pics...

This is the view from our hotel room. You can see beautiful mountain ranges here that can't be captured well via photos.

No...Curtis has not improved on his spaghetti eating abilities...and shall I say...Like Father, Like Daughter!!!!!

Avery had to scrape the "green things" off her garlic bread before even trying it.


This was Curtis's "main dish" or as stated on the menu "meat dish"...his meal had 5 courses.

You can take the red necks out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the red necks! Like Mother, Like Daughter!!!

Ok...and for those of you just tuning in to our blog....be sure to see the post before this one where we went to Hiroshima...It was quite an experience! Be sure to keep checking back for more "National Lampoon's Brewer Vacation...Invasion of Japan"!

Hiroshima

Yesterday, we took the "bullet train" to Hiroshima Japan. We covered about 600 miles of land in about 4 hours and only made 6 stops. Avery was so excited about getting to ride it.

When we arrived in Hiroshima, we took a "rail car" to our hotel to drop off our stuff. This was an experience. The rail cars are like trains in the middle of the street.

Once we checked in, we began our journey to the Peace Park and museum. Talk about an experience...never did I think while sitting in history class learning about WWII, that I would one day get to visit Hiroshima. We learned so much and it was amazing to see actual artifacts, such as glass bottles, clothes, fingernails, and pottery, that were recovered from the destruction. Standing in the middle of a busy city with people hustling and bustling about, it was so hard to imagine that about 64 years ago I was standing in the very spot the A-bomb was dropped and over 200,000 people and most all the buildings and wild life was gone.

Inside the A-Bomb Dome.

marble chest that holds all the names of the people that died.

A model of how Hiroshima looked before the A-bomb was dropped.



This is the same view after the A-bomb was dropped.


Two melted glass bottles pulled from the destruction.


These are some steps that were outside a bank. On that morning a man was sitting on the steps waiting for the bank to open when the bomb hit. The shadow you see was cast by the man who was sitting there when the flash occurred.

This mound holds all the human remains that was collected in the rubble.


Avery ringing the bell on the Children's memorial.


Avery ringing the Peace Memorial Bell.

Today we went to an island off the coast of Hiroshima called Miyajima. Miyajima is famous for the O-torii Gate and Itsukushima Shrine. Both of which are in the ocean during high tide and on the beach during times of low tide.

Me and Avery on the ferry to Miyajima.


The torii at High tide (the big red thing behind us)

The torii at low tide.

One of the best parts about this island is that deer roam free and are so tame that you can pet on them as if you were in a petting zoo.

But you better be careful, they are curious and they will eat your maps!

While there, we also took 2 roapway cars and hiked up some more to the summit of Mt. Misen. On Mt. Misen, monkeys run wild everywhere and don't seem to mind the humans but you'd better not get too close or stare at them...they don't seem to take too kindly to that (so the signs say...we didn't test that theory)

We also saw several temples and shrines along the way and some spectacular views.

Tomorrow we get back on the bullet train and head to Kyoto for more adventures....stay tuned!

Odds and Ends...Again

Well, not a big week this week, so I'm going to take the time to share some odd ball and off the wall type stuff.

I thought about typing up an "Ode to my Bike", but I later realized I'm not that creative, so I'll just share my appreciation of my bike with you. Over the past 6 months, my bike has served as my main mode of transportation, Avery's chariot hauler, my weekend get away vehicle, and most recently, my work truck. Yup, I found myself at the local hardware store buying two 12 foot 2x4's just knowing that those bad boys were going to fit on my bike just fine. I took a friend for back up and below is what we've got. No problem at all! I've now carried pipe, a 13 gallon kitchen trash can, a 19" computer monitor, groceries and scores of other items across town in my vehicle. The odometer has just over 920 miles - all since Thanksgiving. I love my bike.



I came across an e-mail this week that I want to share. It was a "You know you have been in Japan too long when..." e-mail. There were 5 pages of one liners that for the most part, were spot on. I'm pasting some below that either fully or partially apply to me and or Deana. Enjoy.

You've been in Japan too long when:
You notice you’ve forgotten to tie shoelaces.
You rush onto an escalator, and just stand there.
You find your self bowing on the telephone.
You don’t hesitate to put a $10 note in a vending machine.
You see a foreigner on the train and think “Wow! A foreigner!”
You have trouble figuring out how many syllables there really are in words like ‘building’.
You don’t think it’s unusual for a truck to play “It’s a Small World” when backing up.
You have mastered the act of simultaneous bowing and hand shaking.
You no longer find anything unusual in the concept of “Vermont Curry”.
You have run out of snappy comebacks to compliments on your chopstick skills.
When in the middle of nowhere, totally surrounded by rice fields and abundant nature, you aren’t surprised to find a drink vending machine with no visible means of a power supply.
And you think nothing of it when that lonely vending machine says ‘thank you’ after buying a coke.
When you are arguing with someone about the color of the traffic light being blue or green…and you think it’s blue.
You see a road with two lanes going in the same direction and assume the lane on the left is meant for parking.
You believe that the perfect side dish to eat with a juicy, deep fried pork chop is a pile of raw, tasteless, shredded cabbage.
You run down the platform, pushing people left and right to jump onto the train because you know there won’t be another one for a good 2 or 3 minutes.
You accompany your ‘no’ with the famous hand waving in front of the nose.
You think sushi at a baseball game is perfectly normal.

Disneyland!!!!

Yesterday, Curtis took the day off and we took Avery out of school, a total suprise to her, to have a family fun filled day at Disneyland Tokyo. I learned 2 definate things, one, I'm not as young as I used to be and, two, there is nothing more magical about Disney than seeing it through a child's eyes!

We started out our day at 7:00 a.m. making the trek into Tokyo to Disneyland in order to be there before they opened at 9:00. Curtis is such an engineer, he timed everything (train schedules and all) to get us there at 8:45....perfect! We walked right up to the ticket counter and bought the tickets, then took our place in line for the stampede into the park.

Avery's eyes sparkled when she saw Cinderella's castle towering in the center of the park! Her excitement further escalated when she noticed Pooh greeting kids in the courtyard. Her attention was quickly distracted from Pooh when she saw the fairy godmother from Cinderella. She ran up to her to get the momentous photo taken.

Avery was terrified of Peter Pan...of course...who wouldn't be afraid of a man in tights!

We were quickly off to the "kiddie" section of the park, still not sure how many rides she could do. Here she rode the Dumbo Ride (twice), the mini roller coaster (twice), tea cups (3 times), It's a Small World (3 times...and my favorite as a kid), and several others. It was here that we saw Minnie Mouse! Avery wanted to have her picture made with her so bad but other parents were being quite pushy to get up to her...Avery didn't have a chance...well...not without her pushy momma! I picked her up and pushed our way up to Minnie. She noticed our efforts and made it a point to turn to Avery's direction.

Our lunch consisted of me having a Mickey Mouse shaped pizza, Curtis a bologna steak sandwich, and Avery a sausage on a bone..."Pluto's favorite sausage".

Then we were off to the "big kid's rides". Turns out Avery just barely made the height requirements for the rides. She rode, with her daddy of course, Space Mountain twice...yes twice! It turns out that Space Mountain was her favorite! Splash Mountain twice, Thunder Mountain, a Star Trek motion theater ride (that I just about tossed my cookies on) and many others. She had a blast....and so did daddy!!!! I had more fun watching my "two kids" playing.

We topped the night off with the famous Disney Electrical Parade. Avery was sooooo CUTE! She was so awwwwed. She was the only kid in our little area that was jumping up and shouting at the characters. All the characters looked her way, waved, and many blew her kisses. She was so excited! They had to cancel the fireworks due to high winds, so we came home.

Whewww!!! We were all tuckered out!