Like I said, things are sprouting– and nowhere is that more evident than our onions, which are popping up all over the place.

Up close, you can see the happy and healthy onion growth.

Overall, the plot is finally starting to look like a garden.

Our zucchini are looking happy, with lots of fresh leaves.

The tomatoes are also getting settled and starting to grow.

We added some honeydew melons!

Lastly, a few images of our environment. First, our pruned apple tree is starting to bloom.

We’re the Garden of Rowham.

A nearby flower garden (just 15 feet from our plot).

Here’s the fig tree near us.

And Teisha standing proudly in front of the super-productive lemon tree.

This last image might not be for everyone. The garden hasn’t had many pests, save for a gopher or two. And gophers can kill a garden, so we’ve had to take it seriously. First, we added two ultasonic spikes in the garden, which you dig down until they’re in the thick clay, so sound transmits better– then they emit a pulse of annoying sound every 30 seconds, continuously. They helped some, but we next turned to sprinkling Fox Urine around the garden, to make the gophers think predators were nearby. Still, it wasn’t working. With some reluctance, we turned to gopher traps. A few days ago, we had our first dead gopher. Hopefully, the other gopher deterrents will work, and they’ll leave our little plot alone.

Thanks for following along on our gardening journey!

Followed by after planting.

Teisha did a great job planting our Tomatoes.

Teisha also trimmed back the Apple tree.

We ended up putting up trellises for the Tomatoes, and then I installed drip lines.

There’s also drip lines for the rest (like the onions and Cantaloupe shown here).

The Zucchini gets special treatment- drippers aimed right on the plant.

The drip irrigation system is all tied into an 8-line manifold, which will soon be on a timed cycle.

And lastly, we’re finally seeing our first sprouts! First, of onions…

and also of Cantaloupe!

• Meat only once or twice a week, and that only 1/4 lb portions. I split a macadamia crusted mahi mahi fillet a few days ago– when you haven’t had meat in a week, even a few bites tastes AMAZING.
• Eat mostly salads / veggie stews / veggie stirfrys. Cook most food from fresh vegetables.
• Try to not eat anything with: high fructose corn syrup, modified food starch, corn syrup, modified corn product, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, hydrogenates vegetable shortening, etc. This cuts out most junk food, as well as almost any processed food from the grocery store… there’s a few things in the organic isle at Albertson’s or in Whole Foods, but even there you have to watch for them.
• Avoid “hidden” calories from beverages. I mostly drink water or herbal tea (no milk, no sugar). When you feel hungry, drink a glass of water/tea and wait 15 minutes. If you still feel hungry, then eat food. Otherwise, you were just thirsty.
• (something I’m still getting used to) Order smaller portions at restaurants, and split when possible. Don’t get appetizers. Order from the healthy / reduced calorie menu when possible.

Those 5 guidelines, and I feel healthier than I have in years!

The Daily Travelogue

• Day 1 in Japan: Made it to our Tokyo hotel!
• Day 2 in Japan: Akihabara
• Day 3 in Japan: The Imperial Gardens and Shinjuku
• Day 4 in Japan: Tsukiji Fish Market, Hama-rikyu Gardens, and Science Museum
• Day 5 in Japan: Ghibli Museum, Yoyogi Park, and Shibuya
• Day 6 in Japan: Meguro Parasitological Museum and Shinjuku
• Day 7 of Japan: To Kyoto and Kitano Tenmangu Shrine Flea Market
• Day 8 of Japan: Kurama Onsen and Arashiyama
• Day 9 of Japan: Kyoto: Castles, and Temples, and Shrines (and Malls), oh my!
• Day 10 of Japan: Koyasan and Okunoin
• Day 11 of Japan: Cemeteries, Temples, and back to Kyoto
• Day 12 of Japan: Kinkaku-ji Golden Pavillion, Manga Museum, and more Kyoto
• Day 13 of Japan: Return to Tokyo and Akihabara
• Day 14 of Japan: Tsukiji and Harajuku
• Day 15 of Japan: Edo-Tokyo Museum and Souvenir Shopping
• Day 16 of Japan: Returning to America

Direct Photo Gallery Link

• Japan Honeymoon Photos

Lessons from Japan, as twittered by Paradoxdruid during the trip:

• The Japanese are obsessed with bags. Everything, from pastries to magazines to cash gets a bag. Sometimes three.
• Public transit can be amazing- I would take a hour-long Tokyo daily commute gladly. Efficient, easy, and quick.
• The one thing the Japanese don’t have: trashcans. Expect one per 10 blocks, if you’re lucky.
• Japanese futons are perhaps the most comfortable beds ever- my whole life, I’ve apparently needed less padding.
• Tokyo is the source of all our beliefs about Japan. The rest of Japan is filled with almost distressing normal folk.
• That said, Tokyo is the most amazing (and cleanest) city ever. By far my favorite part of Japan.
• It must be mandatory to have >3 vending machines per block. This is how all Japanese, young and old, get beverages.

It was with some sadness that we left our little cozy hotel room in the New Izu hotel, which was like a second home to us by now and where we knew our way around so well… and even the people at the front desk knew us well! The first picture is where much of this travelogue was written. I’m quite grateful to have such a nice laptop for the trip! The second picture is the view outside our window (on the 5th floor — our first room was on the 2nd floor, but the exact same place on the floor). We were right above a Lawson’s that came to know us well. Andrew snapped a picture of a “Western-style” room as we went to check out — third picture.

For the last time, we got breakfast at Pronto, where I think we had breakfast most days in Tokyo (less than a block from our hotel) — 4th picture. We again got a toast-style thing with egg and cheese and meat pieces and probably cream cheese within that made it extra sweet. Teisha got a half-toast piece with a cute monster face on a piece of (maybe?) meat (top right corner). We also got a pizza-like thing and a milky bun — we couldn’t resist the cow on it. And Andrew got some tasty hot cocoa.

We then made our way to the Ueno station where we could grab a 1-hour train directly to the airport (it was great being near such a big subway/train station). We had to capture something we saw the first day of our trip — on the airport trains they automatically rotate all the chairs so they’re all facing the front!! Pictures 5 through 9 are trying to show this (it was hard to capture but Andrew did a great job!). Teisha got her last tasty milk tea and then we got on the train to the airport. We passed many rice fields as we went out of the city (after a long time!), and as we got to Narita, the town where the airport is, everything became much greener — there are some beautiful little forest hills around there. It was just amazing how where there wasn’t concrete things were so green.

Once at the airport and through security we went rummaging for food and Andrew discovered that half the airport is made up of shops and food courts. Seems quite typical. 10 hours later in L.A., we had two hours to catch our connection to Santa Barbara and just barely made it — after going through initial checking, we had to grab our checked luggage (which took forever — huge flight!) and go through customs. Somehow we were part of the minority that looked like we did not need to be checked by Customs and made it out (over half the plane was flagged!) … and ran around LAX to the right terminal, only to be redirected (our flight was Delta, but the plane was run by one of its subsidiaries — American Eagle — glad Delta figured this out). Running to our gate we found we had to catch a little bus to a little American Eagle area. While on the bus on the runway Andrew took a picture of a plane getting ready to take off nearby! (4th and 5th from last pictures) We made it to our gate with 10 minutes to spare before boarding.

The 18 minute flight from LAX to Santa Barbara was rather beautiful, though a bit overcast. We took pictures of what must have been somewhere on the 101 highway between Ventura and Santa Barbara.

Lastly is a picture of our treasure from Japan. We were actually sorting out everything to give to close friends and family. Most of it was won in claw machines by the amazing Teisha. The little green things are edamame beans, which are quite popular in Japan and have their own TV show (and yes, were all won by Teisha). We feel a bit silly for also getting chopsticks and folding fans, but that’s what people expect, right? There are also some purple and white cylinder things that Teisha had no idea what they were when she won them, but they turn out to be hollow cylinders of a cheeto-like substance.

And that concludes our travelogue of our honeymoon to Japan! Hope you all enjoyed it and feel free to comment!!

With our last day in Japan we figured we should learn a bit more history about the country we’d been in for the last two weeks, so we headed for the Edo-Tokyo Museum, the largest historical museum in Tokyo. Luckily pictures were mostly allowed (except of the actual artifacts), so we snapped away. Overall, the museum was very informative of the history of Tokyo (previously named Edo), with an emphasis on the 1600′s history, but it left us wanting to know more older history of Japan. There were very good English translations available in all the permanent exhibits, and an English audio guide was available (though it was virtually reading the English plaques off of the exhibits). All the pictures up to and including Andrew by the little car were in/around the museum. Some things of note:

* The museum starts mostly around 1590AD, when the Tokugawa clan moved into what was currently a little village. Before 1590AD, the museum has some ancient artifacts going back several thousand years from people inhabiting the area that is now Tokyo — seems like several different people inhabited this area at different times. Quite a lot of history, but they only had a few little pots and remnants to show this.

* They had some really neat models of different parts of the city in the 1600s. It really demonstrated how, even back then, the streets of the (poorer) areas were really crowded, whereas where the upper-class citizens (i.e. samurai) had a ton of space, with big yards/gardens, etc. 60-70% of the city was destroyed in a fire in 1657, after which is was largely remade to have the upper-class citizens have more reasonable amounts of land/housing.

* They had some antique paliquins on display. They’re basically little carriages without wheels that have a support on either end where two people could carry it (clearly for the wealthier citizens). Some were actual antiques whereas some were replicas that people could actually get into — Andrew thought they were actually quite roomy. The more ornately-covered ones were for women.

* Though we didn’t get a chance to see any Japanese Kabuki theatre while in Japan, we did see a good-sized exhibit on the history of kabuki at the museum. They also had a replica of a stage with performers as well as a miniature stage house.

* It’s really amazing that it was only around 1800 that Japan started Westernizing, and politically their world really changed in the mid 1800s with the forced opening of the harbor to the world. After this point there was a lot on “modern” Japan — Westernization and the World Wars.

* What was really rather interesting was a couple maps they had in the World War II area. They were maps of the U.S., some with lines from Japan to the U.S… but they were one of the very few exhibits without English translations. Very suspicious. We think they were most likely Japanese plans to fly over and attack the U.S.

When we came to the museum there was also a special exhibit featuring Osamu Tezuka, who is thought to be the first manga artist with his creation of Astro Boy and is thought of as Japan’s Walt Disney. It was the most crowded exhibit area (with few tourists). Unfortunately, we couldn’t take any pictures of this exhibit. Also, it was largely in all Japanese, so it was harder to translate, though there were many little movies of his work going on that didn’t require much language understanding. But overall it was very informative — admittedly I knew of Astro Boy, but didn’t know much about it and didn’t know of Osamu Tezuka. It was interesting to really see his work progress over the decades and become what is more recognizable as modern-day anime/manga style. Also, it seemed like Disney may have gotten some ideas from Tezuka — one of his most famous series/movies is “Kimba the White Lion” from the 1960s, which reminded us both a lot of a famous movie about a lion named Simba…

After hours at the museum, we decided to head to Harajuku to go to Kiddyland and buy some souvenirs we realized we had to get, such as a 3D model of an animal cell (and now it lives on Teisha’s desk at work). While in Harajuku we caught lunch at what turned out to be a Chinese restaurant (well, Japanese take on Chinese food) and were rather disappointed… but glad to try it. Andrew basically got rice with veggies and Teisha had a veggie stir fry… they were both OK. But the server was nice and took our picture without us even asking.

Side notes:

* The subways are awesome. Cheap and your next train is every 3 minutes!! And they go everywhere and it’s super easy to transfer to another line.

* Nearly all women wear heels and most wear a skirt/dress, as seen in the leg/foot shots on the subway. Also, something disturbing we noticed over time — a lot of people are bow-legged. We mostly saw it in the women, but it could have been because of skirts… We have some theories for this — excessive wearing of high, thin heels, or, maybe more likely, sitting traditionally folding one’s knees under the body. Not sure what it was, but it was fairly common… Common enough that of the little TV we watched there was an actual advertisement for knee braces to fix this problem..

* We’re missing our tasty snacks from Japan. Our favorites were: Milk tea (black tea with cream) — could be bought from just about any vending machine!, waffle ice cream (sometimes with chocolate) which was often in vending machines but more often in 7-11s, and Teisha really liked these snacks that were (maybe) rice made into a soft homogeneous texture coated in a sauce with honey and soy (I think) and put onto skewers (Andrew didn’t like them) — they were at most convenience stores. The milk was also quite good — very rich. (There’s a picture of this stuff in the third from last row of picts.)

After Harajuku we ventured back to our Ueno station area for our last night. We ate dinner at a little ramen shop we’d eaten dinner at about a week before — the fourth from last picture is of the store front. We both had sobe noodles with tempura (of shrimp and veggies mostly) in it, and Andrew had a side of oyakudon. Teisha happily discovered a whole area with multiple claw machine arcades just blocks from the hotel (on the last night!!) and had much fun there. As the big shops were closing, it was neat to see little street food vendors come out and basically make little restaurants on the side of the street.

And that concludes our last full day in Japan! All in all, it was quite an interesting and fun honeymoon.

With our two days left in Tokyo and having seen pretty much all we wanted to see, we decided we had to go to the Tsukiji fish market at least one more time. So, we got up early and caught the subway to the market — since it was about 8AM, we hit rush hour subway traffic, which is quite an amazing thing to see in itself. The first 8 pictures of today feature the rush-hour traffic, with the last picture showing Teisha captured. It’s quite the experience — not only are you shoved in far beyond “American” standards of capacity, having most of your body crammed up against a stranger, but the entire car is dead silent too. Nobody talks. Cell phone use on subways is prohibited — everybody text messages. When we whispered it felt like we were being too loud on this packed car. One of the most amazing sites we saw before was the exiting and merging of traffic from one of these packed subways — lots of people got off at one stop and walked up stairs to the exit, but as you walked up the space narrowed until you had to go single-file. Everyone merged beautifully, without a sound or a misplaced-step or any pushing or shoving — I feel like this couldn’t happen in the U.S.

The next 17 pictures are of the Tsukiji fish market. (We went here once before on day 4.) Andrew had the best ramen he’d ever had at a shop in the market (though no fish in his soup). Lots of imports from China, handicrafts and animals. Teisha enjoyed some unagi (eel) skewers, so fresh!

We then caught the subway to a popular shopping area we’d kind of failed to find before — Harajuku, which is near Yoyogi Park. The 12 pictures after the stained-glass window (an ad in the subway) are of this area. Teisha found a nice shirt top (that looks like a short dress really) in one of the shops. The streets were filled with high school-aged girls, and we felt a bit old and out of place. At one point when Andrew was alone for a few minutes while Teisha explored a shop, Andrew received many dirty looks from different girls! He was grateful to have Teisha return and save him. Side note: Poodles are probably the most popular dog we saw in Japan, either that or dachshunds.

The real reason we came to this shopping area was to find Kiddyland, a 7-some story high toy store. Apparently we’d done just about everything else that the Lonely Planet guide to Japan recommended for kids, so we figured we’d like this too! And we did. There were toys from electronic/science gadgets, Studio Ghibli anime movies, a whole floor devoted to Snoopy, and a whole floor devoted to anime-related stuff. The pictures start with the giant capybara stuffed animals (yes, those are capybaras — known as “kapibarasan”!) and end at Teisha holding a snail anatomy model. Teisha had to go back later and buy an animal cell model, full with removable organelles, which now lives on her desk in her lab.

After the shot of the “Condomania” store is one of the beginning of the main shopping street in Harajuku — we went back once more for a tasty crepe, and had to get this shot to capture the teen-packedness.

Since we were pretty close, we went over to Yoyogi park and people/dog-watched for a while. There were some guys really good with a basketball showing off, and a hip raver dancer came in with his boom box and tried to get some attention, but there just weren’t really many people there. Then it started to sprinkle and it really emptied out. As a side note, most benches (when they exist in Tokyo) have a middle bar to prevent (homeless) people from sleeping on them, though, as you can see in one picture, it’s not too much of a deterrent. On the way to the subway station, Teisha discovered another dog/cat store, where they were sold for no less than $2000 each…!

We took the subway back to Akihabara because… why not? We love Akihabara. Teisha found another claw machine arcade that had a game where you could win staghorn beetles — actual live ones! Unfortunately Andrew had to remind Teisha of Customs, and she didn’t try to win one.

For dinner, we headed to a big building that is several stories high and 90% restaurants in Akihabara. It was cute in that it had rows of manga on the walls (not that we could read any of it). It also had pictures of what must have been California beaches and they were playing out-of-date American rap music (quite the combo overall). Andrew again got a curry dish with a hamburger patty and Teisha had a shrimp pasta dish.

We wandered around Akihabara some more after dinner. Andrew had to take a picture of a closet of costumes that girls can try on and take pictures of themselves in. It’s very popular to have places where people just come in to have casual pictures of themselves taken… we don’t quite get it.

Lastly, Teisha bought a little plastic sushi toy — very realistic, right down to the detail on the fish and the sushi conveyor belt movement!

We took the shinkansen (“bullet train”) back to Tokyo (first 12 pictures are of this trip). With all baggage in tow, we climbed into the subway trains to try and find our new hotel, which was “Sumisho Hotel” — we wanted to stay at the New Izu again, but they had no Japanese-style rooms available when we booked. However, when we finally found the Sumisho Hotel (their website map was terrible), we were quite disappointed — the receptionist was very unfriendly and spoke very little English, our room was smaller than we expected for the price and rather poorly lit, and then we found the ultimate reason we left — there was no internet in the room. We went downstairs and talked to the receptionist to find that when they said on their website that “It is possible in all of the guest room[s]” to access the internet what they meant was that there was one single old laptop, with an odd-colored screen running an out-of-date version of Linux, chained by the front desk that we could use “free of charge.” When we tried it, Andrew had to fix it to let it even run an internet browser, and even then it crashed on every other webpage. We then explained to the receptionist that we had to cancel our 3-night reservation, which we luckily could do free of charge, because we were business people and needed internet access in our rooms. Anyway…

We climbed back on the subway, across town to the New Izu hotel, and found they luckily had a Japanese style room for three nights! (Their website said they only had Western-style rooms, which are generally cheaper, and we were willing to settle for that by this time.) We highly recommend the New Izu hotel (near Ueno station) to anyone staying in Tokyo — they’re a 5 minute walk from a major subway station, they have very friendly staff with good English, great little Japanese-style rooms with amazing bathrooms/showers, a nice common room (though we never really used it), quite affordable and reasonable for what you get, high-speed internet in every room, and just great overall — best place we stayed at in Japan. We didn’t take pictures of our new room because it was just like the first place we stayed at (though the pictures don’t quite do it justice).

It poured for an hour or so that afternoon, but quickly stopped. We grabbed a lunch while waiting it out. Again we went to Pronto — it’s a block from the New Izu and has very tasty, filling meals (even for us fat Americans!). We’d only gotten breakfast before, but lunch was also quite good — the Japanese understand Italian food well because of the noodles factor, I think.

We then hopped on the subway to Akihabara again, where Teisha captured some wild “Kapibarasan” stuffed animals (yes, right now capybaras are a big thing in Japan — they’ve got their own cartoon show!).

After a while of claw machines and other fun shopping at Akihabara, we went back to the area around Ueno station, our “home base,” to explore it some more. There are lots of shopping alleys that really come to life in this area at night. We got dinner at a little cheap bar sitting place that, while the food looked good, was pretty terrible — very greasy and fatty. It just goes to show you that you get what you pay for.

The following pictures (after dinner) are of the Ueno shopping area. Lots of cute little shops, and we even found several claw machine arcades. This time you could win your clothing detergent from a claw machine! Imagine the daily savings. And, as always, pachinko is everywhere. Also of note, the streets of Tokyo are always empty — people pretty much only take the subway, and the traffic is mainly made up of taxis, though there never really is any “traffic” that we saw. If only the U.S. could embrace public transportation more, instead of everyone wanting their own personal bubble everywhere…

We got up early today determined to beat the crows that frequent the Kinkaku-ji Golden Pavillion Temple, often just called the “Golden Pavillion.” The pictures of this temple and the temple grounds are the 21 pictures following the cute dog we saw in a office building. This temple is probably the biggest tourist spot we’ve hit on our tour of Japan. It was originally built in 1397AD as a retirement villa for a shogun, but has burnt down several times since then. The most recent burning was in 1955 due to an obsessed monk — it was re-built the same year. And yes, it actually is coated in real gold. Though it is quite beautiful on the outside, and surrounded by a beautiful pond with real living cranes, you cannot go inside the temple — the pictures we show here is what you see. The most prized shots are the temple’s golden reflection in the water. There’s a neat golden crane statue on the top. Feel free to use any of our pictures! As always, there were several tourist shops as we left the Temple grounds, and a little Shinto shrine (with no English explanation) tucked away.

We next headed to the International Manga Museum. It’s a rather new museum, having opened in late 2006, and is really more of a library than a museum, but it was still a lot of fun. The crowning glory of the museum is that it has a huge donated collection of manga (over 300,000 pieces), mostly from one privately-owned bookstore that closed a few years ago, and much of this manga is on shelves throughout the museum and visitors can search for their favorite or rare manga books and read them throughout the museum. The museum building used to be an elementary school, so there is a big AstroTurf front field and many benches and tables throughout. There were also many manga artists, some employees and some visitors sketching at the many tables. Pictures are prohibited inside the museum, but we didn’t know this so we snapped several — they start at the astroturf front yard picture and include the following 18 pictures. Other than the “Wall of Manga,” there are special exhibits in the museum. General overall comments:
* It’s a great resource and many manga-fans would be in heaven but, again, it’s difficult when you don’t know Japanese — very few English resources, and virtually no English manga.
* Cute kid’s section, and we wanted to check out those possibly easier to read Japanese books, but only kids and parents were allowed…
* Throughout the museum were seemingly-random sketches done by different manga artists, decorating the walls but not really as exhibits.
* This museum hosted a manga symposium recently and in one room they had on display several panels each with a drawing of a fan with sketches inside by the different visiting artists — next to it were the names of the artists who had drawn sketches on which fan, and the manga they’re famous for. It was neat that they were from all over the world, not just Japan.
* We went to a neat little theatrical show — it was a style called “Kamishibai” and it is basically a story told through panels, each with a picture of the story, that the narrator changes (putting it in a wooden frame) as you go through the story, adding theatrical sound effects and enthusiasm. This was probably our favorite part of the museum, as you didn’t really need to understand Japanese. Though we did feel a little silly being the only ones who weren’t parents with little kids… but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
* The museum had a neat interactive computer room where you could randomly generate manga characters (just appearances) or, for example, go through a pre-generated story, panel by panel.
* There was a special exhibit on a French manga artist — very different from Japanese manga, but apparently French manga is quite popular and flourishing.
* One of the largest gallery areas was currently taken up by employees sorting through boxes and boxes of donated manga! This is definitely a growing museum! They also had signs asking for donations, especially of older manga or foreign manga. So, if you’ve got it, they’d probably have a use for it!

After the museum, we went and got some curry for lunch — there are many curry restaurants that we saw in Japan, and all the dishes from the different curry restaurants look pretty similar — in the pictures one half of the plate is rice and the other half is a brown curry with some kind of meat. Teisha got curry with two shrimp cakes (right) and Andrew got curry with some kind of vegetables and meat (left). The curry place we went to was neat in that you could specialize your meal, adding on different toppings for different prices. Food side-note (on the picture after the food plates):
* Common items we found on tables at just about every restaurant: chopsticks, individually packed and disposable hand sanitizer wipes, a container with pickled vegetables of some kind, and toothpicks.
* Less common items: napkins — it was pretty rare that we’d see them there, though this place had them.
* Very rare: a buzzer on the table for service. This place was the only one we saw with these, but it really makes sense — you don’t pay tips in Japan, and the service usually only comes to you when you flag them down.

The next 12 pictures are of our new Kyoto room and area (the last two are of a common dining/hang out area). We stayed at the same place we did before going to Koyasan (called Ikoi-no-ie), but this time I think we got the best room in the place, even though we paid the same price as before… We were rather disappointed with how small our first place was (not to mention we were right by an alley with paper-thin walls — read the details here), but this new room had its own gravel entrance off of the main building, tucked in the back, and was probably about 30% bigger than the original room. Much better. (For people planning to stay at Ikoi-no-ie — the best rooms are at the main building, not their new expansion that’s two blocks away!)

We then headed for a shrine we’d seen before — the Fushimi Inari-Taisha shrine. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but we didn’t go there for the shrine itself — we went there to buy two shrine gates (torii) so we could make our own shrines at home — we had seen lots for sale at the tourist shops following the street up to the actual shrine. There are examples of little such shrines in a picture. The following picture is of cooked quail, which, for reasons unknown to us, are known for being available at multiple places in this tourist shop area.

Once it was getting dark we headed again to the popular shopping arcade, Shin-kyogoku (we went there on Days 8 and 9), where we wasted time and money on manga and claw machines. So many claw machines. There’s also a particular chain of manga book stores called melonbooks — we can let you guess what kind of manga they sold! Teisha fell in love with a store selling little rabbit’s foot ferns covered with moss on ceramic dishes — too bad we couldn’t bring plants back. We also found out that this area has been a popular shopping area for about four centuries — sure makes the U.S. look young!

We ended up eating dinner at the arcade at a place called the “Star” restaurant — Andrew had a rice omlette (very common) with a beef patty while Teisha had a bowl with rice, cheese, and shrimp. We also enjoyed a tasty desert of pancake with strawberry and whipped cream.

Comments on other random pictures:

* After the Golden Pavillion pictures, we did indeed find a vending machine with men’s ties inside (along with batteries and disposable cameras).
* After the shots of our room, there’s a picture of a food front with all their delicious deserts on display. Waffles!
* After the big Fushimi Inari-Taisha gate pictures there’s a statue of a Tanuki, a raccoon dog. We saw many Tanuki statues — they’re from ancient Japanese folklore, but are also real animals… and apparently do have large testicles in real life. This caught our eyes because tanuki are the focus of an animation we’d seen, Pom Poko, where the animals could shape-shift and use their testicles for flying and making bridges.

The first picture is a better shot of the view outside our hotel room window. Very scenic, and I’m guessing that little stone figure is several centuries old.

We wandered out and found another Shinto shrine, the only one we could find marked on our map in the whole village – it was the Bentensha Shrine, a shrine to a local water dragon. Like the smaller one from the previous day, this one was also on a small island in a pond. Very beautiful.

In the same area (Danjo Garan) were several very old Japanese Buddhist temples. Teisha is standing in front of Daiedo Temple. The next picture is of the oldest intact Buddhist temple in Koyasan, Fudodo, from 1198AD (explanation follows the picture). It’s really amazing considering it’s wood – most the other temples we’ve seen have burned down and been rebuilt at least once. The following orange pagoda is the temple Konpon Daito (“The Great Stupa”), completed in 1937. It’s interesting to imagine the Fudodo being as brightly painted and colored as the more recent Konpon Daito – the Fudodo probably looked like this at one time. Hidden among the temples we found another Shinto shrine (in orange), dedicated to the Goddess Nyu and God Koya other divinities which were worshiped by the villagers who lived in Koyasan before Kobo Daishi arrived. After this, Andrew is seen standing in front of the Saito, another temple. We then stopped by the Reihokan Museum (we took a picture of the front) which we could not photograph inside, but we definitely recommend. There are lots of old relics (mostly paintings and statues) and it boasts to hold 8% of Japan’s national treasures (though not all are on display). All related to Japanese Buddhism, of course.

We then walked across town to the cemetery, determined to get an audio guide so we’d have a better idea of what some of the gravestones are. Along the way:
* It was interesting to see that along with soda, coffee, tea, and cigarettes, you can also buy alcohol (including sake!) in vending machines.
* Bad Engrish is everywhere – Andrew had to take a picture of the spare tire cover on the back of a Toyota. I’m still not sure I understand its cryptic message. We’ve seen a lot of stuff like this on t-shirts too.
* We were amused to see the head of Jack Skelington (from “Nightmare Before Christmas”) hanging by a cup in front of a big, ornate Buddhist temple alter (it was hard to capture it all and include Jack). “Nightmare Before Christmas” in general is quite popular in Japan – we’ve seen a lot of merchandise all over.
* And again, lots of tourist shops line the main streets of Koyasan – we felt kind of bad that they were so empty and we’re not real shoppers, but it’s not really tourist season.
* We found another tucked-away Shinto shrine, lead to by many gates up a steep climb. We went up (it was all completely empty) to find a well-maintained shrine and alter. Again, no idea what the name was or what it was a shrine to, but it was in a very beautiful location in the hills surrounded by forest – tons of moss (and a cute shiny green beetle!). We thought it interesting that maybe the same family has maintained this shrine for generations, though we don’t know if this is true at all…

At the cemetery again, we took many more pictures. It’s really the most amazing cemetery I’ve ever seen, and it really makes me wish I knew Japanese better so I had an idea of what was written on the tombstones, though many of the older ones are too worn to read. Some picture comments:
* Unfortunately, we couldn’t figure out what the red “aprons” mean, though they were pretty common – if any Japanese culture scholars know, feel free to comment!
* We went off the main path a little and saw older, less-maintained tombs. There’s a picture of a small group of stones, all moss-covered, that was most likely a family.
* There are a lot of workers that maintain the cemetery. Some stones have been tied up so they don’t fall down, and we saw workers tying a tree together that threatened to fall. Closer to the most sacred section we saw workers actually scraping off a tomb – they couldn’t possibly do this with all of them, and have clearly let most just become part of nature, so it makes us wonder why some are getting cleaned.
* In small crevices there are often little shrines or tombs.
* Again we took a picture of the memorial dedicated to miscarriages and people who have drowned. There’s another memorial like this one in the more sacred section (which we could not photograph).
* The last cemetery pictures are again of the newer areas, near the entrance. It is interesting to think that most of it may have looked like this, but the nature grows up around it when given centuries – it will probably eventually look like the older areas.

We got lunch at a little (non-tourist!) shop on a side-street as we wandered back to a bus stop. Again we got oyako-don (egg, chicken, and rice) and it was very filling. Though it is not listed on the menu, miso soup is frequently included in the meal (along with tea).

We couldn’t resist taking a picture of a bird nest on the side of the Central Information Office front door – it’s such a contrast to the U.S. At our apartment building in California there’s wire mesh all around the eaves to keep swallows from nesting. In Koyasan, they let them nest and just put a cardboard box underneath to catch some of the (tons!) of feces. Nature was here first after all.

We reversed our journey as we went back to Kyoto from Koyasan, though this time with less exciting, unplanned adventures – we actually paid attention when our train changed into another train that we didn’t want (they seem to do this often around Koyasan). So, lots of pictures of our journey back.

For dinner, we went back to the Kyoto arcade area and found a conveyer-belt sushi place recommended in multiple guidebooks. For the close readers, you may realize this is the first time we had sushi in Japan and yes, we are a little ashamed to admit this, but it really wasn’t as common as we thought it would be! There are 6 pictures of this place, ending with the little blue plate of squid sushi that Teisha bravely ate (Andrew would not!). It was good, but very chewy, as squid tends to be. The next picture is of whole eel that was sold at another place (about $17 US an eel).

And then 8 pictures of claw machines! Teisha was in heaven for a little while. There’s also evidence that it’s not just for kids – businessmen also frequent the claw machine arcades. You can win anything from food (frozen or baked), stuffed animals, action figures, to live puffer fish.

Other things of note:
* The picture of the alley near the end is the entrance of Katsukura, where we had great tonkatsu in Day 8 – as you can see, it really is quite tucked away (at the end of the alley).
* Most people reading a book in public have a nondescript book cover so you have no idea what the book is they’re reading (two pictures of this). When we bought a book they made a paper cover for us, though many people own their own personalized cloth covers. We think this is just another way for people to have some privacy in these busy, crowded cities, though it is a bit sad to us because you can’t randomly start a conversation with a stranger over how you like what they’re reading…
* One last picture of the arcade area at night – most the shops are in adjoining covered, closed-off streets (no traffic), but this is the main street where buses go by, and there are many more shops here. It really lights up at night, and is really the only place of action in Kyoto at this time.