Long time, no see...Nara and Kyoto (久しぶり...奈良と京都)

This past week, we had a day off in the middle of the week, and so, I decided to take a trip out to Nara for the day. I was trying to figure out the last time I'd been there, and after some thought and checking my photos, I figured out that it had been about a year since I've been there. Really? That long? It's hard to believe! I had actually been debating whether or not I should go there or go to Arashiyama, but I figured that there would be less people to deal with in Nara than in Arashiyama (last year around this time when I went, it was really pretty, but really hard to do anything because of the sheer number of people who were out there...for example crossing a bridge took 15-20 minutes when it shouldn't have taken more than 5...)

Anyway, I took a walk through Nara Park, got some senbei to snack on, saw the deer, visited a small garden, and took some nice photos of the fall colors. The garden I went to was Yoshikien Garden. It's a really small garden (right next to a much larger one), but foreign visitors get in for free, whereas the other one is rather expensive to go into. Having been to both before, I know they're both nice, but I decided to stick with the small one this time around. When I got there, I thought I would have to pay the 250 yen that normal adults have to pay because I'm not a tourist, but the lady told me it was fine and I could just go ahead and go on through. Lucky!! And as a side note, she seemed really surprised, but happy when I started talking to her in Japanese. She complimented me on it and made some comments about it to the Japanese lady who was standing behind me. I took a lot of pictures in there. On this particular day, the day started off kind of sunny, but it got quite cloudy and chilly after a while, so I didn't stay in Nara too long, but it was nice to get a change of scenery.

Here's a few photos from that trip out to Nara:

One of my favorites from this day out!

What these leaves are sitting on is actually a type of moss!

 

Can't go to Nara without at least one photo with deer in it...

 

And, on Saturday I took a trip out to Kyoto...again there was an internal debate about Arashiyama...but just thinking about all those people was making me tired so...

 

It has been even longer since I've been to the city of Kyoto than since I've been to Nara.  More than 2 years, in fact. The last time I was there was around when I first started living in Japan.  The reason behind that is because although Kyoto has many pretty places, temples and traditional things and famous sites, there are so many tourists there, that I don't like it so much as some other places.  When I went out there this time, I didn't really have any set plans about what I wanted to do -- there were a couple places I was thinking I wanted to go for sure, but the rest I felt flexible about -- a kind of see how it goes and how I feel kind of day.  It was a really nice day at the start but in the afternoon it seemed like it was threatening to rain (although, luckily for me, it did not).

 

Started the day out just taking a walk -- this is a temple near Kyoto Station

 

The following photos are from Kyoto Imperial Park. It was actually my first time to go there -- I didn't have time to visit the other times that I'd been to Kyoto. Also as a random point of interest, when I got to the far side of the park, I could hear some music playing, and it turned out that across the road, in another park area, they were having some kind of music festival, so I checked that out for a little bit too...

 

 

My highlight photo of from the day -- this family was playing with the leaves under a giant ginkgo tree

 

The Imperial Palace entrance

After visiting the Imperial Park, I took a bit more of a walk around, and headed off to the Kyoto Handicraft center, where I may or may not have done some Christmas shopping.  Before getting there though, I took a brief detour at the Heian shrine...

 

Before leaving Kyoto, I also wanted to make a brief stop at Kiyomizu, for a couple of reasons, one being they have some nice shops in that area, and another being that it's supposed to be really pretty for taking pictures of the autumn colors.  The only problem with that second reason being it had already gotten dark.  But, I told myself that wouldn't be a problem because they were also supposed to be illuminating it for November, and that would be interesting to see, right? Don't you think?  I'm sure it would be, and from what I saw, it was.  However, I may have temporarily forgotten this is Japan, and events such as this, mean ridiculous numbers of people.  On the walk up there, I figured there would be lots of people there (there always is) but the walk there was particularly slow and congested this time around.  Once I finally got up there, I was shocked.  SO MANY PEOPLE!!! They were saying that it would be AT LEAST a 20-30 minute wait to get up those stairs.  At that point, I was getting kind of hungry and was already rather tired, so I just took a couple photos, and then headed back to make my way home.

 



So many people...

So many people in the shopping street too...

And that concludes these two episodes of day trips to places I haven't been in a while...



It's been too long...

As the title of this post says, it has been a while since I've written a new blog post.  Not for lack of thought, mind you.  I've been thinking about writing a new post quite often recently, but haven't found the time to do so until now.  And actually, I think that I have so many things to talk about (or pictures to share) that I'm going to split it into a series of (probably) two or three posts. 

So, first to catch up on what has been going on since my last post.  At work we had our sports day back in the middle of October.  Originally the plan for it had been to be on a Saturday, but it was changed to the following day due to a prediction of rain (which didn't actually happen), and so our 3 day weekend was broken into 2 days off, 1 day of work, 1 day off.  It was an unfortunate situation that caused much frustration all around.  On the positive side, however, our kids did a really nice job, and the weather that day was beautiful.

Since then, work has been quite busy with all of the events that we have been having, or will have before the winter holidays. Things like Halloween, Thanksgiving (on the American timing), our winter performances, open days for the parents, formal evaluations, and other such things.

The weather in October was quite wonderful, although it did cool down significantly for about a week before going back to being in the 20s.  This month as well has had some really nice weather in combination with some cool spots.  As matter of fact, just last weekend, the temperature was at a lovely 22 during the day, whereas this weekend it has been hovering around 15 (which of course, is by no means cold, but it is starting to cool down).

With the weather being so lovely, I have been out and about taking all sorts of walks recently.  Sometimes it's in Kobe, other times on a mountain, or just going out and about wherever I happen to be at the time.

I really liked the clouds this day

 

It was night time, but there was this bright red band in the sky....

Just taking a walk by the river

Not something you see everyday

Taking a walk up to Nunobiki Herb Gardens



Finding random shrines everywhere



Don't worry, I'm not always by myself on my walks...

Night views

I've also been meeting up with friends on occasion to go out for lunch/dinner/pancakes/starbucks/ whatever is appropriate at the time...

 

See? I have proof!

November has also been a great month for going to lives.  There have been so many that I want to go to (not that I can go to them all though, unfortunately).  Some of them have been street lives, others in live houses, and in both Kobe and Osaka.  And no, I'm not always going to see the same person, although, as you know, there is that one that I go to very often, and yes, of course I did this month as well.  I think the most interesting one that I went to this month was the 'Looper live' that happened here in Kobe, although at a location that was new to me.  Anyway, at this particular live, there were 4 musicians who performed (3 of them were really cool, and the other one was, well... kind of strange to be perfectly honest...) and each of these musicians used a loop machine during their performances (which, if you don't know what that means, means that using a separate microphone, they would record a sound, and then they can play it back through their machine, put it on a loop, add effects, and so on, at the same time as they are playing their instrument and playing).  It was really interesting, and so much fun! 

Got this one off Twitter after the looper live

And, as a side note, I've been getting to know some of the other people who semi-regularly go to the same lives that I do.  Always nice to have another group of people to talk with!  And they are getting used to seeing me around too...not questioning why there is a foreigner there (although those questions do always come up as soon as there's someone there I  haven't met before). 

Speaking of which, I really noticed that when my friend joined me at a live in October at Pinot, where as you know, I usually go every month when the live happens there.  Basically what happened was, I got there first, and was talking together with Tatsu-san, but when my friend came in, he stopped talking and got really shy.  I was so surprised because I've never seen him like that before.  And similar things happened with other people who usually talk to me as well -- they were really quiet.  Yoshida-san however, had no problem talking with us.  In fact, he made fun of my friend from the second he walked in (which made her hit me -- horrible, ridiculous logic!)  That being said, I was super happy that she joined me. Sometimes it's nice to be able to have someone you can talk to fluently.  My friend had to leave before I did, which was too bad, but interestingly enough, after she left all of those 'shy' people started talking with me again, and of course Yoshida-san as well.  Fascinating.  I don't think I really fully realized until that day, how unusual my situation in going to those lives is.  Intriguing.

Since this blog is kind of jumping all over the place (sorry about that), I also visited Minoh Park again in the middle of the month.  It is a very beautiful place, although it was kind of disappointing this time, because I went a little bit too early and the trees had barely started to change colors, (although, as you'll see some of them did).  When I went, I was expecting there to be a lot of people, but I also knew it was kind of early in the season, so I wasn't quite expecting the sheer volume of people that were there.


Recently, I've been fooling around with an app to make my photos into collages...

SOME changed colors...these were particularly bright 

Maybe you remember from last year...this is one of Minoh's biggest attractions

As you can tell from the vast amounts of people

Still so much green!

Maybe it's hard to see, but I liked the way the light was playing off this Torii gate

There are more photos from that weekend (up a mountain the day before) where I took the afternoon to go Minoh Park.  You can check them out by clicking here.

And as a final note and picture: Yay! It's autumn again! That means that this yummy soup is back! I highly recommend trying it if you haven't! It's delicious!!!

Since this post has gotten quite long, look forward to another (or 2) blog posts about my trips out to Nara and Kyoto this past week!  Coming soon....