Yet Another Japan Post

It occurs to me that travelogues are primarily interesting to the person giving them. This is one of the things I find so fascinating about travel--you can't really share. Photos and videos are nice, I guess, but there's just nothing to compare with the heady cocktail of excitement, nervousness, tiredness, and just plain being there that one can only get first-hand. On that note, I'm probably going to stop doing Japan trip posts after this one.

I have vastly more photos and videos than I've posted, but despite my considering them very interesting, I imagine that most others do not. So, in keeping with the general theme of travel-posts-as-narcissism, all of today's photos will be pictures of me.

The first one was taken in the gardens in front of the old imperial palace in Kyoto. It's a very nice palace; its main downside is that, being built entirely of wood, it has a habit of burning down all the time. As such, it's fairly new. The palace buildings themselves are very nice--they build the roofs out of a special kind of cedar tree bark, which is great for natural air conditioning. The roofs are fairly hardy as untreated wood goes, but they do need to be replaced every 20-30 years. The inner gardens are beautiful as well.

Speaking of gardens, the silver shrine has, I think, the nicest. The golden shrine gets its reputation from being plated in gold, whereas the silver shrine's silver plating was one of those good intentions that ended up disappearing in the face of a wartime budget (something medieval). Despite never having been plated in silver in its entire history, the name stuck. To make up for the lack of metallic sparkle, the shrine goes all-out on their large gardens. There is both a zen rock garden, which consists of big piles of rocks raked into razor-sharp precise shapes, and then grounds filled with flowers, carefully sculpted trees, rivers, and colorful bushes.

Incidentally, the silver shrine is generally famous as a cultural development center. Among other things, this shrine's culture is largely responsible for the development of the tea ceremony and flower arranging as quasi-religious experiences in Japan.

The final picture shows me outfitted in full tourist regalia--camera pouch, sweatshirt tied around the waist, and water bottle in hand. Most of my wardrobe isn't fashionable enough to compete with your average Japanese person, and I didn't really try. In the background is the Fushimi Inari Taisha, or at least a miniscule part of it--there is a large main shrine, dedicated to the fox-god of rice and prosperity, and that's not it. This photo was taken in front of one of the thousands of small shrines lining the trails. The trails are probably several miles all told, most of which are bridged by large orange shinto gates. At first this is impressive, but after hiking up the steep trail for a while, it blurs into kind of an orange haze. This shrine will punish you for slacking on your exercise program, it seems.

By the way, those little statues off to the side are, in fact, frogs wearing bibs. I'm not sure which god this is, but I asked about the bibs, and they really are bibs for eating. Since Japanese gods are frequently given gifts of food, I guess there is probably some relation between the bibs and the offerings.

Anyway, it's late, and I'm never going to get over the jet-lag if I don't go to bed. So good night all, and thanks for tolerating the travelogue. The videos were a bit too big to post, but if you're curious, try to catch me sometime when I'm near my laptop. I have a walking tour of some underground tunnels, baby dolphins, close encounters with a whale shark, cute children feeding deer, juggling, and panoramic shots of both an 11-floor train station and downtown Osaka. I think they're cool, but who knows -- maybe I'm just biased.