お久し振りですね!

And a little over a year later, a new post! Gasps can be heard around the world!

By now, most of you are already aware that we are still alive and mostly unaffected by the Tohoku earthquake and surrounding incidents. As such, this will probably be the only reference to it in this blog.

Last we left off, Will was on his way to Japan. He has since arrived and returned to the States and Natalie's second school year began. Our friends, Katie and Ben, also visited last year (and we went to their wedding in October). We did other things. Ate some things. Had a lot of snow over the winter (more than usual for the region - also, it is not unusual for thunder to accompany gently falling snow here). Spring arrived and a new school year began, which brings us to now. That's a heavily abridged version of events, so I will try to fill in a few details with photos (click on them for to make them larger and clearer!

Here's Will and Nat in Asakusa (in Tokyo). Most of the cherry blossoms in the picture are actually fake. Whether they were just decoration for the upcoming Cherry Blossom Festival or placed around for photographers not happy with the already extravagant number of natural cherry blossoms around, I don't recall. Our hotel was right beside the gate to this temple, so it was the first big sight we took Will to see.


Randomly, there was a wedding going on at the Shinto shrine next to Asakusa temple. The bride and groom were able to take advantage of the rickshaws at the temple (and a few other tourist attractions in the city, I imagine, but I've only ever seen them in Asakusa - at least in Tokyo).


Randomly, there's a small amusement park tucked into the city just near Asakusa.


This bird was just hanging out in a tree branch, staring at all the crazy humans only two feet away while we all clamored to take advantage of this perfect photo opportunity.

Leaving Asakusa, we noticed this udon restaurant sign. Nat took the video.

We visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which just so happened to be in the midst of its own Cherry Blossom festival. Delicious festival food was everywhere.


(this photo was taken by Will)

Then we saw another wedding procession when we visited the Meiji Shrine. It must be awkward having your wedding in a prominent tourist site, what with the random foreigners and strangers snapping photos of you all over the place.


Then, we went on to Kyoto! It promptly snowed the night we got in.


The following morning, we set out to visit the Kinkaku-ji (or the Golden Pavilion Temple). The pavilion is covered in gold leaf. We also visited Ryoan-ji, but we've got over a year to cover here and I've barely gotten through one week.

Besides, isn't this video of a fountain in one of the Kyoto Station shopping areas more interesting? Perhaps not, but it's still pretty darn interesting.


We then visited Nijo Castle (not pictured) and Fushimi-Inari Shrine (partially pictured). The Fushimi-Inari shrine complex is huge and connected by tunnels made of torii gates donated by businesses all over Japan. It covers an entire mountainside and I have yet to see it all. For a time, we wandered away from the torii tunnels and followed a path through a bamboo grove. It was pretty, but ultimately led us further away from civilization than we were willing to aimlessly wander (at least when we had a bus to catch).



After Kyoto, we brought Will to our home in Yosano. We visited some of the sights. This is the gate to one of the local Shinto shrines, reportedly one of the best cherry blossom-viewing locations in town and a view of the bay.

We also visited Nariai Temple (haha, try reading that Wikipedia page!), a nice spot with a scenic view of the Amanohashidate (and our town!), Ine whaling village and a local history museum (where we live used to be part of the Tango Kingdom!)

At the end of Will's stay, we took him back to the airport where a television interviewer asked him why he visited Japan and what he thought was "cool" about the country. A few weeks later, Natalie's students and coworkers mentioned seeing us on TV. National TV! Will is, apparently, good luck to have around.

I may share more photos from Will's trip in other posts, but not today.


On to August, when Katie and Ben visited and we hit a couple Morning Glory festivals (which are, generally, less exciting than Cherry Blossom festivals, but morning glories are my favorite flower, so I was pretty excited). This photo is from the Fushimi-Inari Shrine.

For the most part, when Katie and Ben visited, we went to a lot of the same places we went with Will. We traversed a bit more of the Fushimi-Inari Shrine until the summer heat and endless stairs broke down our will to live and we stumbled back to the bus.


While in Kyoto, we took a day trip to Nara, where they have a giant Buddha in a temple and wild "tame" deer which roam the streets and eat anything they can yank out of your hands or purse. Collecting tolls for being the city's protectors, perhaps? Vendors sell crackers to feed the deer. As soon as you purchase a bundle, the deer crowd around you impatiently.

After two weeks, we took Katie and Ben back to the airport and saw them off.

(photo by Len)

Sometime last year (probably around this time, so I'm screwing up the timeline here) our Japanese professor from college visited with a class. We met up with them in Kyoto along with our college friend, Len, who also teaches in Japan (there was also another former student there, but I didn't know him and I forgot his name! I'm appalled with me!). We were all really excited.

Sometime last autumn, Nat had a conference in Kyoto. I tagged along and went to see a few things while she was busy. I walked to Sennyu-ji Temple (technically, "temple" is redundant there, but that's how it's written in the brochure) and Fushimi-Inari Shrine (again) and returned to Kyoto Station to do some shopping before meeting up with the others for dinner at Harvest, an all-you-can eat organic food buffet (for relatively cheap!)


The next day, I decided it would be wiser to take the bus. That and my feet ached from the non-stop walking the day before. I visited the Sanjuusangen-do, the Heian Shrine and the Kyoto zoo. I also wanted to visit the history and art museums but the history museum was inexplicably closed for the month and the art museum was having a special event that scared me away. Unfortunately, I don't have any exciting pictures of the Sanjuusangen-do, as it was forbidden inside the hall. But I have this nice picture from the garden!

I wandered a bit more after the Sanjuusangen-do, trying to find another sight, but almost walked onto the campus of a women's college. Note: bus and train maps are not good pedestrian maps. Note 2: if you notice that, suddenly, there are only women around, you may have stumbled onto a women-only region of the world.


There were a lot of interesting animals at the Kyoto zoo. It's a small zoo, so it had the basics (zebra, giraffe, elephant, flamingo...) and a few other interesting species (such as this vulturine guineafowl - the colors!). It was mid-afternoon and a fairly warm day (for autumn) when I got to the zoo, so most of the animals were asleep. The hippo was nothing more than a lump in the water with a nearby child yelling at it to wake up. There was also a young child there with her grandfather who would occasionally roll her face in the dirt, despite protests, until she got a very light spanking.


It was close to closing time for the Heian Shrine, so I didn't get to see the gardens (which are, supposedly, very beautiful). The buildings were really pretty, though.

That brings us to last autumn. After that, most of my photos are random textures I took for art purposes. Hopefully we'll be more diligent in keeping up with this blog in the future!

Spiders!

Nat pretty much said most of what I'd say about our day for the most recent kimono festival. It was all pretty fun. Nat didn't get a chance to record some of the more amazing fireworks, though if you watch her videos closely, you might catch a glimpse of one of the kitty-face fireworks or one that looks suspiciously like a pair of glasses. We also had smiley-face fireworks, bunny-face fireworks and a few that looked like sunflowers, the Yosano town flower. It was pretty amazing!

For the past few weeks, Nat's been trying to get a good picture of the spiders around here. We finally got a one. While I was hanging clothes out to dry, I snapped a couple photos of one that's been hanging around on our balcony. To best see the image, you should probably click on it for a better view. That way, you can see all of her stripes and colors! This spider has been back there for almost as long as we've been living here. Her web survived the typhoon we had (which is pretty amazing!). She's about as large, if not larger, than the size of the palm of my hand, if you count the legs. In this picture, she is busy trying to remove one of Nat or my stray hairs. It must have drifted over from the clothesline.

She is a jorō-gumo, also called a golden orb-web spider or nephila clavata (for those who like to know all those specifics). Like many of the prominent animals in Japan, there is folklore associated with them. Supposedly, these spiders can turn into beautiful women who attract and eat men. Those two bulbous bits in her web are her stinkbug victims. I imagine one of the two is the retarded stinkbug I rescued three times from unrelated fates. Also, in this and the next photo, you can see our neighbors' rooftops! They're made of stone or clay tiles. Some people even buy metal tiles, nowadays, but the traditional tiles are still used on the older houses.

You should probably click on this next picture for a better view as well. This picture gives you a slightly better idea of how big the spider and her web are (hint, her web extends past the sides and top of the picture). You can also see the remains of yet another stinkbug.

While I'm at it, here's a picture of the laundry. Amazingly, you can't even see the spider or her web from this distance (she's in that far corner there). I had often wondered how the bugs manage to fly into such obviously enormous webs. This somewhat convinces me that spiders aren't just preying on stupidity.

Now we just need to snap a photo of some suzumebachi (giant hornets), an oniyanma (giant dragonfly) and one of the various giant cicadas and we'll have a giant Japanese bug collection started! I guess there are also the stag beetles, dung beetles and such to take photos of, but we haven't seen them yet. Also, it's getting cold enough that we may not see more beetles for a while.


This next picture (the one to the left) is one of our nearby rooftops. Most of them have some sort of decoration like this in the top corners. This is a more simple and common one. Some of the more ornate buildings and castles have statuettes of fish on the corners to ward away fires.

That's it for now. No new and exciting recipes to share. We shouldn't have any more festivals to worry about for at least another month or so.