Picture updates

We've been pretty active recently just "touristing" around Kyoto. This is the time when people all over Japan come to Kyoto to see the leaves change color. It is something people back in Iceland can't really grasp. Back home, autumn lasts for 2 weeks and then it only takes one windy day and every single leaf has been blown off the trees.
The autumn has been slowly coming over the city and right about now the colors of the forests are just spectacular. Going places on public holidays or over weekends is not such a good idea at the moment because of crowds. Fortunately we have no classes on Wednesdays so we tend to use those for sightseeing.

I will let wikipedia do most of the introduction this time.
Let's get down to business...

Kinkakuji & Ryouanji
Kinkakuji is the location of the Golden Pavilion, which is probably among the most famous sites all over Japan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkakuji
Japanese love their rock gardens and the one at Ryouanji is pretty amazing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryouanji


Kurama
We went again to the small town of Kurama, located in a valley north of here. If you have been following this blog, then that is the same place the fire festival was held at. Now we went in the daytime and visited the temple there up in the mountain. We walked this mountain path for a couple of hours and came down in the town next door. A muddy path, that one. We got to take nice pictures and see beautiful landscape in return.
That Kurama mountain has heavy ties to the history of Japan, as this is the place Yoshitsune spent his days in exile as a kid. I am guessing you are not familiar with Yoshitsune so if you want the short version, he is somewhere at the top of the "Most famous person in Japanese history" list. If you want the longer version, here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamoto_no_Yoshitsune


Fushimi Inari-taisha
This place is just nuts. Check the pictures and you will see why. You can also check the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fushimi_Inari-taisha
A part of that site was used for the Hollywood movie "Memoirs of a Geisha", or "Sayuri" like it's called in Japan.
We went the whole hiking trail from beginning to end and it took us about 4 hours. Quite a walk. Nice scenery though so it was OK. At one point there was a clearing in the trees and a view of the city faced us. Interesting how you can't see any tall buildings here. I heard somewhere that it wasn't allowed to build skyscrapers in Kyoto as that would ruin the city image.

That's all for now. Enjoy.

iroironakoto

That's one fly dog

Just trying to keep this short here, or as short as I can. A lot has happened since I last blogged. I think looking at my pictures and my videos will give a better picture (and videos... get it?!) of my experiences here. The captions below the pictures are a must-read if you decide to head over there.

From the 2-4th of November there was a school festival (Koyama festival). Due to this, we had no school on Friday the 2nd and no classes were taught after lunch on the previous Thursday, in order for students to prepare for the festival. The thing was huge in magnitude. There were booths or stalls set up everywhere around campus and students would sell all kinds of foods through them. Sort of like 17th of June, downtown Reykjavík, but only more intense and more compact. Everyone tried to push what they were selling so walking around was a bit of a hassle, especially when you are white and stick out of the crowd so easily. It took us about 1.5 hours to walk a circle around the campus, something that usually takes probably around 10 minutes. They sure have some delicious foods here... I tried deepfried icecream for the first time and I just have to report that it was amazingly good. There is a small video in my webalbum which shows the crazyness that was going on.

There were also performances all over the weekend and we caught some of them. On the Friday night we watched our American friend, Heather, win the Karaoke contest. That was pretty cool. She speaks good Japanese and she was singing a song in Japanese so that gave her an edge over the others. Japanese people like when stupid gaijin speak their language. She would have won either way though, she's a helluva singer.

Have you ever heard of a phenomena called "Double Dutch"? Well, I had never heard of it. It's jump rope, but with 2 ropes and there's a lot of dancing involved, highly concentrated towards the break dancing part of the whole dance spectrum. It's amazing to see these people do their thing. You can see sample videos of that as well.

We decided to give the festival a break on Sunday and went instead to visit the Imperial Palace. That weekend it was open for the public. It is open like that 2-3 weekends a year I believe. For tourists it is easy to get permission to get a tour whenever, but for the Japanese it is much harder and they have to order a tour several months in advance before they are finally allowed in. So, on these weekends when it's open for the public, then it gets kinda crowded. It didn't affect us much though, crowded places is just something to expect here.

Seeing it was interesting and especially seeing the Imperial garden. It is extremely tranquil and beautiful and one can only wonder how peaceful it is when there aren't thousands of people walking the grounds.

On the 6th we were given tickets to see traditional Japanese theater, Kyogen and Noh. It was... interesting. I had heard that it would be hard to sit through and boy did I hear correctly. I didn't understand a word of what was being said. The Kyogen play wasn't all that bad, at least there was some action going on, but the Noh play.... sheesh. It is aptly named Noh though, as all you can think of while watching it is "NOOOOOOOOH!". OK, there. I just insulted a roughly 400 year old Japanese tradition. Sorly!

Fun to have tried this at least.

These days I'm experiencing some weird shit with my cellphone. Spam mails sent to cellphones is not something you hear about, or at least I hadn't heard about it back in Iceland. I'm getting bombarded by spam! I supspect it being due to me having the address typed up here to the right. I will therefore have to change the address in the coming days. It shouldn't be a problem though as I can (ONLY) change the address 3 times a day.

To end it with, here is another disturbing dog clothing picture for you.

If your dog is getting married, why not dress it up in a wedding gown that has a fake hand attached to it:

Oh man, this looks just wrong...