A couple weeks ago, I went to the Yokaichi Giant Kite Festival in Shiga prefecture. Located in the Yokaichi district of Higashiomi, Shiga, east of Kyoto, the festival dates back to the 1800s and features—you guessed it—one of the world’s largest kites.

Weighing 700 kilograms (slightly more than a sumo wrestler)  and measuring 100 tatami mats wide (about 12 by 13 meters), this is one kite you don’t want to mess with.

The Yokaichi festival is held annually on the last Sunday of May, on a field near a riverbank in the outskirts of small-town Yokaichi. The highlight of the festival is the flying of the giant kite, which is flown twice during the day.

You can also bring your own kite to fly at the festival, or enter a kite competition for local teams. Teams make and decorate oversized giant kites, which are judged for their decorations and how well they fly.

Several teams—local clubs and schools—entered the contest.

The designs were colorful and cute. There were many tiger-themed ones (for the Year of the Tiger):

And this charming one was one of my favorites. It appears to depict what BP is doing to Mother Nature:

Like the kites in the competition, the giant kite is also handmade. It’s made from bamboo and rice paper, and a new one is built every three years. I assume that the reason they replace it so often is that the kite is actually pretty delicate—a few years ago, the giant kite broke apart mid-air and actually injured some festival goers. Fortunately, I didn’t find out about this until after the festival.

The kite is so big that it requires a team of people to assemble it (or whatever they need to do) on site, before they can fly it. I watched the afternoon flying of the giant kite (it's flown once in the morning, too). After a lengthy prep time, the kite took off after 2:00.

As you can imagine with a 700-kilogram kite, the kite requires a whole team of people to hold onto its line. This group controlled the flight of the kite by pumping the line up and down, like workers pumping an old handcar on a railroad.

Some years, if the wind isn't good, the kite only flies for a few seconds, or not at all. This year, we were lucky. The kite flew for a good few minutes, before dropping down for good (this is the third and final year for this kite to be used).

What surprised me most about this festival is how much it reminded me of a county fair in America. Because the Yokaichi festival is held on a rural field, it feels like a fairground in the US. Along with the requisite festival food stands, there were even live performances on a small soundstage—so county fair-like! It felt nice.

(Note: When we first got there, a local bluegrass band started playing on the soundstage. I'm no bluegrass connoisseur, but I thought they sounded good--they even sang with a down-home, country-American accent. By the time they had sung Take Me Home, Country Roads, and moved on to the Tennessee Waltz, I started feeling teary-eyed, and my fellow American friends and I admitted that we all felt a little homesick.)

Of course, there were many only-in-Japan touches to the festival—some sort of Miss Yokaichi contest, for one thing.

As well as the Japanese equivalent to the Red Hat Society. These ladies were adorable (and so well-coordinated)!

After the festival, the fun continued. My friends and I went to a cake buffet in downtown Yokaichi. Yes, a cake buffet. I didn’t know until recently that Japan has many cake buffets. And we aren’t talking about Costco-style carrot cake either (with all due respect to Costco), but incredibly delicious, French-patisserie-style cakes that made my heart weep with joy (and probably my cholesterol levels, too).

The cake buffet we went to is Club Harie, a bakery and buffet chain that is, apparently, pretty popular in Japan.

At Club Harie, you can order a cake set, which gives you three types of cakes of your choice, plus a drink. Or, you can order the cake buffet option, which gives you 90 minutes of all-you-can-eat cake, drinks, and appetizers for just 2205 yen (I swear, I don't work for them).

My friends and I opted for the cake buffet (of course), and it was absolutely delicious. There are pastries, small desserts, and appetizers (mini pizza slices, quiche, etc.) that you can get from self-serve tables.

The cakes themselves are located behind a display counter; you choose what you want, and a pastry chef cuts the slices for you. It’s basically every child’s (and adult’s) dream come true. The cakes were beautiful—tarts, mousses, cheesecake, tortes, crème brulee.

The ones I chose included a strawberry tart, a raspberry-and-white-chocolate mouse (complete with gold flakes—ah, the luxury), crème brulee, and the best cheesecake I’ve had yet in Japan.

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I think I may have found the sport for me. While Japan’s national sport is most definitely baseball, with soccer a close second, sumo is one of the oldest sports in Japan, dating back 1500 years, with origins in the Shinto religion.

I went to my first sumo wrestling tournament in Osaka in March. I initially went for the novelty of it—who wants to see very large men in very large loincloths? I do!—and I left the tournament with newfound respect for the sport, as well as my own pick for my favorite sumo wrestler (everyone needs a favorite sumo wrestler).

Each year, there are six major sumo tournaments in Japan. The Osaka Grand Tournament lasts for 15 days, with prizes awarded on the last day. I went on the second-to-last day. The matches are held from 8:30 AM to 6:00PM, and you can show up at any time, until the doors close at 5PM. It’s a family event, and you can bring your own food to snack on.

Here we come to Sumo 101. The basics:

Sumo wrestlers wrestle on a platform called the dohyo, which is made of clay and covered with sand. A roof that resembles a Shinto shrine hangs over the dohyo. On top of the dohyo is a low circle of rice-straw bales, which form the wrestling ring. The object of the match is to either force the opponent to step outside of the straw circle, or to force him to touch any part of his body, besides the bottom of his feet, to the ground inside the circle.

Each day of a tournament, the lowest-ranking sumo wrestlers wrestle first, with the highest-ranking one, the yokozuna, wrestling at the end of the day. There is currently one yokozuna, a Mongolian wrestler named Hakuho. (Note: Until recently, there were two yokozuna, but the other yokozuna, Asashoryu, retired in February after a scandalous drunken brawl.)

As you might expect from a 1500-year-old sport, there are a lot of rituals to sumo. Here’s how a basic match works:

1) Before each match, the referee, who wears a traditional samurai-style kimono, calls off the names of the wrestlers. He actually sings their names, in a very drawn-out, old-school way, so drawn-out that it was often hard for me to understand which names he was calling.

2) After the wrestlers come to the dohyo, they rinse their mouths with water, to purify themselves. They also lift their legs up high on each side, and stamp down their feet. This is supposed to help drive evil spirits from the dohyo. It’s really quite amazing to see this in person—they are so big, but they do this ritual with such flexibility.

3) The last main ritual that wrestlers do before the match is to throw a handful of salt onto the dohyo. This ritual is reserved just for higher-ranking wrestlers, and it's done to purify the ring. Apparently, the more salt they throw, the more confidence they show against their opponent.

(Note: I saw one wrestler practically throw a huge fistful of salt towards his opponent’s face, which prompted my fellow companions and I to exclaim things like, “Damn, someone's feeling feisty!”)

4) After the initial rituals, the wrestlers face off in the middle of the ring. They squat and glare at each other, then leave their positions to throw more salt. They do this a few more times, building excitement in the audience (and, I’m sure, adrenaline in themselves), until they both finally feel ready to wrestle.

Then, they wrestle.

5) The most surprising thing to me about the actual wrestling is how fast it is. Just a lot of slapping and grappling, and it’s usually over in seconds—maybe a minute or two at the most.

It’s very satisfying, how quick the matches are, and what a simple sport it is—not in terms of skill, of course, but in terms of the lack of tools or complex rules. It’s really just two big men, trying to knock each other down.

My favorite sumo wrestler? His name is Baruto. At 6 feet, 6 inches tall, Baruto is ginormous. He towered over his opponent in the match that I saw (here he is, the big fellow on the left).

Young Baruto is 25-years-old and comes from Estonia. He won the match that I saw that day, of course. His overall score by the end of the Osaka Grand Tournament was 14-1, and he did so well that, after the tournament, he was promoted to the ozeki rank, which is the second-highest sumo rank after the yokozuna level.

I know how to pick them, don’t I?

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Above: Kiyomizu-dera temple lit up for Hanatouro.

Sometimes, Japan is just magical.

Last month, I went to the Higashiyama district of Kyoto for its Hanatouro light-up. The Higashiyama Hanatouro is an annual light-up of several famous temples and winding streets in Higashiyama, a district in eastern Kyoto. It starts at dusk and ends at 9:30PM each night for one week in March.

I went to the Hanatouro on a Friday night, after work. It was a clear, cold night, with a new moon, and it wasn't as crowded as I had heard it can get.

Hanatouro means, literally, “flower and light road,” and it consists of lantern displays and elaborate, lit-up flower arrangements along the streets of Higashiyama, as well as the light-up of temples in the area.

There are about 2400 lanterns displayed (yes, here they either go big or go home), in seven different styles, ranging from wood to stone, all made from local Kyoto materials.

That night, I walked from Higashiyama train station through Jingu-michi and other winding streets towards Kiyomizu-dera, which is perched on a hillside and is the most famous of the temples in Higashiyama.

The walk to Kiyomizu-dera was fun and lively, with couples and families strolling together, and warmly lit shops still open and selling delicious-things-on-sticks. With the warm lighting, crisp night, and family atmosphere, it felt a bit like walking around Disneyland at night.

I loved this cheery group of cooks, who kept yelling, “Hot wine! Hot wine!” and ladling it out to customers.

By the time I reached Kiyomizu-dera, it was almost 9 o’clock, with not too many crowds. I had heard that the light-up of Kiyomizu-dera is not to be missed, and it’s true! The lit-up trees and pagodas were simply stunning.

Being there at night felt entirely different from my past daytime visit. Although there were a decent number of people there, there were also many hidden spots and shadowy places where I walked alone, and I was overwhelmed by the sense of history of the temple.

In the dark, alone, the usual busy-ness of one of the most popular tourist spots in Kyoto melts away, and it’s just you in a place with a 1200-year history.

Towards the end of my walk around Kiyomizu-dera, I came upon a tree that was lit-up with spotlights and had these gorgeous white flowers in bloom. They were huge flowers—practically the size of a pair of cupped hands—and looked exactly like the flowers from a book I used to read when I was a child.*

I have since found out from my reliable coworkers and Wikipedia that those flowers are called kobushi, and they are a species of magnolia that is native to Japan.

When I saw them, they reminded me so much of that story from my childhood, that my brain went, “A-Ha!” and I realized that seeing those beautiful flowers--which I had last seen in a picture book when I was about eight-years-old--blooming before my eyes is yet another reason I came here.

(*Note: The book was about a young squirrel whose mother always warns him not to eat the flowers of a certain tree, but the flowers captivate the little squirrel so much that he, of course, ends up eating some and gets very sick. Not that I'm accusing Kiyomizu-dera of growing poisonous flowers.)

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Above: Cherry blossoms at a shrine light-up in Otsu.

Cherry blossom season is winding down in the Kyoto area, but I have many more pictures to share. In my last post, I blogged about the cherry blossoms I’ve seen during the day. I’ve also been exploring cherry blossoms by night.

During sakura season, at night, the Japanese like to light up their sakura at temples, shrines, and parks--it's kind of like Christmas in spring. I recently went to Miidera temple in Otsu, Shiga, just northeast of Kyoto, to see its nighttime light-up of cherry trees. The cherry blossoms, or sakura, were in full bloom, and it was a clear, not-too-cold night—perfect for seeing the sakura.

Miidera has many wooden buildings--over 40, in fact--spread out on different levels of the base of Mount Hiei, on the border between Kyoto and Shiga prefectures. For the first twenty days of April each year, Miidera lights up its many sakura trees and lets visitors roam around the complex for free (many, if not most, of the famous temples and shrines in Japan charge small admission fees).

When lit up at night, the sakura trees have a pinkish-silver, silent glow that I can only describe as other-worldly. At Miidera, the trees were so bright and vibrant in the dark night, and the grounds and visitors were so quiet and hushed, that it felt like I'd stumbled into another world.

The most impressive part of the light-up was the sakura trees that arched over a long set of stairs leading to a set of buildings called the Kannon-do. The branches of very old, very tall sakura trees arch over the stairway, creating a cloud cover of cherry blossoms overhead. When you gaze up at them at night, they look like massive stars (that, or lit-up popcorn).

The cherry blossoms overhead were so mesmerizing that, as I walked up the stairway--which, on the side walking up, has no rail between you and the mountainside--I had to remind myself to watch where I was walking and not fall over.

After our visit to Miidera, my Kyoto-native friend took me to the nearby Biwako canal, which carries water from Shiga’s Lake Biwa to Kyoto. The Biwako canal was lined with lit-up cherry trees, creating another out-of-this-world view. Seriously, with the water steadily flowing and the silver-pink tree branches draped over the canal, I felt like I'd walked into a scene from a fantasy movie. Or a computer screensaver.

And my favorite part of the night? A shrine in Otsu that my friend and I came across, on our way to dinner. The shrine was right across the street from our restaurant, and was a wonderland of lit-up cherry trees in full bloom. The branches of the cherry trees were so long and thick with cherry blossoms that walking around the shrine was like walking through a cloud of floating flowers.

There’s nothing quite like looking up into the branches of a soaring cherry blossom tree and seeing layers upon layers of blossom-laden branches, reaching from the tip of your nose to what may very well be the sky. It's actually pretty trippy.
 
Although it was nearly 10 o’clock by the time we went there, there were still a handful of visitors walking around the shrine, quietly looking at the blossoms. There was also a very jolly-looking group of older adults, enjoying a late-night hanami picnic under the cherry trees. That's the life, my friends.

I have to admit that, after my visit to Yoshino-yama, I thought that cherry blossoms, while pretty, are not quite as beautiful as autumn leaves. But after seeing the quiet, still beauty of cherry blossoms at night, I am now a believer.

Bravo, Japan.

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It’s my first cherry blossom season in Japan! Cherry blossoms are in full bloom as I type, this very minute, and really are that beautiful. Here are the things that have surprised me about cherry blossoms:

1)    They often appear more white than pink, at least in the Kyoto area
2)    The Japanese like to light them up at night, especially in temples and shrines, which gives them an other-worldly beauty
3)    From far away, they look kind of like popcorn
4)    They only stay in bloom about a week at the most. Because they’re so fleeting, the Japanese think of them as a metaphor for life.
5)    Cherry blossom trees don’t actually produce cherries. (Am I the only one who didn't know this?)

This past weekend, I went to the mountains to see cherry blossoms. Yoshino-yama, or Mount Yoshino, is in Nara prefecture, about 2 hours south of Kyoto by train. It's the most famous spot in Japan for cherry blossoms, or sakura. It’s a whole mountain just bursting with 30,000 sakura trees. When I went, they weren’t in full bloom yet—maybe about 60% full—but were quite lovely.

To get to Yoshino-yama, you take a gondola up the mountain.

The town of Yoshino is like any other bustling Japanese tourist destination—full of shops selling pottery, tea, and famous local goods.

Yoshino appears to be famous for its mushrooms, as a lot of vendors sold a variety of fresh and dried mushrooms, including shiitake, one of my favorites.

My friends and I ate lunch in an udon and soba restaurant overlooking the nearby cherry trees.

I ate sansai udon, which contains “mountain vegetables,” including root vegetables and mushrooms. It was okay--the quality of the ingredients were so-so, with stale-tasting udon, alas.

Yoshino sells a variety of sakura-flavored goods, including sakura ice cream. I ate this adorable bowl of sakura ice cream in a café overlooking sakura. It tasted sweet and tart.

Like the udon and soba restaurant, the cafe was gorgeous--surrounded by sakura trees.

As we walked around Yoshino, we even found a restaurant that sells sakura soba!

During sakura season, the Japanese like to have picnics under the sakura trees, eat, drink, and drink some more. They call this ritual hanami. It was chilly the day we went to Yoshino-yama, but there were still some revelers hanami-ing it up under the trees.

The next day, I wandered around my neighborhood, east of Kyoto. It was a warm, sunny day, and the local park was full of hanami action, including even a handful of food stands and vendors, in case you wanted to celebrate sakura with your very own stuffed Care Bear.

Children were running around, some of the younger locals were playing impromptu music with bongos and rattles, and people like me wandered around taking pictures of it all.

I stopped by the local shrine, which also had sakura in full bloom, and a few people sitting on the plastic swing set, chatting and gazing at the sakura.

A lovely end to a lovely afternoon.

Next post: Cherry blossoms at night!

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Above: Hiroshima at dusk, as seen from my room in the Rihga Royal Hotel

I recently spent a long weekend in Hiroshima prefecture, which is less than two hours by bullet train southwest of Kyoto. As I mentioned in my last post, I stayed for a night on the stunning island of Miyajima. I also stayed one night in Hiroshima city, the modern, bustling-but-not-too-crowded capital of Hiroshima prefecture.

After checking into our hotel around noon, my friend and I got right to the point, which was to eat lunch. We ate Hiroshima-yaki in Okonomi-mura, a collection of three floors of Hiroshima-yaki restaurants in the city center.

Hiroshima-yaki is Hiroshima's version of okonomiyaki, a kind of cross between a pancake and a crepe. The kind of okonomiyaki that I usually eat is Osaka-style okonomiyaki,—a mixture of an egg-and-flour-batter, with lettuce and other ingredients mixed in by preference (such as shrimp, mochi, and fatty slices of pork), poured onto a table-top grill and cooked into a thick, savory pancake. After it’s grilled, you add toppings to it, including okonomiyaki sauce (a tangy, savory, clearish-brown sauce), bonito flakes (smoked fish shavings), and seaweed powder.

Hiroshima-yaki contains a generous batch of noodles (with a little bit of batter), with seafood or other ingredients added by preference. Unlike Osaka-style okonomiyaki, the ingredients for Hiroshima-yaki are piled on top of each other instead of mixed together.

The kind we tried had egg noodles, sliced cabbage, and bean sprouts, with a thin wafer of fried dough on top, and strips of fatty pork, egg, and fresh shrimp mixed in. Hiroshima-yaki is typically cooked for you (instead of you cooking it at your own table-top grill, as is often the case with Osaka-style okonomiyaki).

The Hiroshima-yaki was very filling and tasted quite good, but was more greasy than Osaka-style okonomiyaki, which I decided I prefer more. I like the chewy richness of the Osaka-style okonomiyaki, while the Hiroshima-yaki tasted more oily and was also harder to eat—since the ingredients were just piled on top of each other, each slice of okonomiyaki kept falling apart while I was trying to eat it.

After lunch, we walked over to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, which is traversed by a series of bridges and the river.

It really does feel peaceful there, and the most surprising thing to me was how much the design of the park reminded me of Paris. The curve of the river, the curve of the bridges, the walking paths that paralleled the river, even the overcast sky that day—they all reminded me of walking along the Seine in autumn or winter.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the designers of the Peace Memorial Park deliberately imitated Paris in their design—Japan seems to be quite a nation of Francophiles, judging by the many French-inspired bakeries and French-inspired knickknacks they sell in stores around here.

The famous Atomic Dome building is also in the Peace Memorial Park. It has been left as is since the 1945 atomic bombing, and is a UNESCO world heritage site.

At the Peace Memorial Park, we visited the Children’s Peace Monument, which displays paper cranes made by schoolchildren around Japan. The monument is dedicated to the memory of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who developed leukemia after the bombing of Hiroshima.

After her diagnosis, she decided to fold 1,000 paper cranes, which, according to Japanese tradition, can grant you one wish. Although she reached her goal of 1,000 cranes, young Sadako died at the age of twelve. Today, schoolchildren from around the world fold paper cranes and send them to Hiroshima to display at the memorial. The cranes are housed in display cases behind the monument.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is located at the southern end of the park. It contains displays about not just the Hiroshima bombing, but Japan’s involvement in wars leading up to World War II. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very far in the museum, because shortly after I went there, my stomach decided it wasn’t very happy with the Hiroshima-yaki, and I spent most of my time for the rest of my visit in the very peaceful restroom of the museum.

But with every stumble springs hope. After I got my stomach in order, we headed over to Hiroshima-jo, Hiroshima’s very own castle.

The castle itself wasn’t particularly impressive—it’s mostly an open-air structure that was partly rebuilt in 1958 after the bombing (with other parts left as they were, showing the ruins to the castle’s original foundation).

At the castle, though, was the first sign of spring—cherry blossoms!

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It’s a shrine, and it floats!

I recently visited Hiroshima prefecture and stayed overnight on Miyajima, a small island northwest of Hiroshima Bay.

Miyajima (which is officially known as "Itsukushima," but is popularly known as "Miyajima") is a must-see site for any visitor to Hiroshima. The island is known for Itsukushima-jinja, a Shinto shrine with a torii, or gate, that appears to float in the water when it’s high tide. The floating torii (pronounced "to-ree"—rhymes with “story”) is ranked as one of Japan's top three sites.

Although it’s most famous for its torii, Miyajima is also known for a few more things, including: oysters, rice paddles, and leaf-shaped pastries.

When my friend and I first got to Miyajima, we tried out the oysters first. We ate at a restaurant near the bay, each of us ordering oyster donburi—a bowl of oysters, eggs, and onions over rice.

Oysters are famous throughout Hiroshima prefecture, and these did not disappoint—they were fresh, tender, and juicy (not unlike the excellent oysters I’ve eaten in the San Francisco Bay Area, I might add). Yum.

After lunch, it was almost high tide, and we walked over to see the torii. According to Wikipedia, the torii was built in the 12th century, although the current one dates back to the 19th century. It was built so that commoners—who weren’t allowed to set foot on the holy island of Miyajima—would have to sail through the gate at high tide.

I had seen pictures of the torii before in guidebooks and on websites. In person, the torii looks serene and eloquent, surrounded by mountains and the sea. It’s a bright orange-red, a shade that reminded me of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Giving a unique contrast to the eloquent torii are the scruffy-looking deer that roam around Miyajima. Similar to Nara, Miyajima is known for its free-roaming deer, which like to amble around, trying to nab food from sympathetic tourists.

Miyajima is also known for its wooden rice paddles, a phenomenon which baffled me while I was there. Miyajima’s small, quaint streets are filled with shop after adorable shop, most of which have a generous assortment of rice paddles on display. The rice paddles have writing on them that, according to one of my co-workers, have lucky messages, such as “do well at school,” and the like.

 
It turns out that Miyajima claims to be the spot where a monk named Seishin invented the wooden rice paddle in the 18th century. I’m a bit skeptical about this, with all due respect to Miyajima. Isn’t the 18th century a bit recent for a tool as rudimentary as a wooden rice paddle to be invented? After all, weren’t humans already using spoons in Cro-Magnon days?

Regardless, you can find rice paddles of all sizes in Miyajima. You can even get your face painted on a rice paddle. (I resisted, although I am totally going to get my baby’s face painted on one, if/whenever I have a kid).

And the best part—Miyajima is home to the world’s largest rice paddle. Weighing 2.5 tons and measuring 7.7 meters long, this is one big rice paddle.

Miyajima is also a famous leaf-peeping spot in the fall, and it’s known for selling leaf-shaped pastries year-round. The pastries are called momiji manju and are stuffed with sweet fillings such as red bean paste or chocolate cream. A number of shops make the manju on-site, using machines that reminded me of the Krispy Kreme doughnut machines.

On Miyajima, we stayed at the adorable Guest House Kikugawa, a casual, 8-room inn that features both western-style and Japanese-style rooms. My friend and I stayed in a Japanese-style room.

The room came with complimentary green tea and rice-paddle-shaped cookies.

For an added fee, the friendly owners of the Guest House Kikugawa cook a traditional Japanese dinner (and a Western-style breakfast, for that matter) for their guests. Dinner that night was amazing. An eight-course traditional Japanese meal of local delicacies (for less than 4000 yen!).

Highlights included grilled fish and shrimp:

Oysters cooked Western-style, with cheese on top. Very fresh and delicious:

White fish sashimi that was not for the faint of heart, but was quite delicious for a sashimi-lover like yours truly:

Some sort of mashed root vegetable (it tasted a bit like taro) with salmon roe on top (apologies--I asked the nice elderly owner what most of these dishes are, but unfortunately, I didn’t recognize the Japanese words she used):

A salted fish that was cooked in a similar style to what I’ve eaten when I went leaf-peeping in Takao and hiking in Tsumago, but this one was by far the most delicious. It was tender and not too salty—just right.

To finish things off, dessert! Very delicious green tea ice cream, with an even more delicious sesame-ish mousse-ish confection, plus a strawberry.

Note: At this point, I would like to give a shout-out to the adorable Australian at the table next to mine, who was also taking pictures of every dish he ate, also with a Canon digital SLR. William, if you’re ever in the Kyoto area again, talk to me. (And this is the closest I’ll ever come to putting a winking emoticon in my blog.)

After dinner, we walked over to see the torii again, which is lit up by floodlights at night. Most tourists only visit Miyajima during the daytime, so the streets were very quiet by the time we headed out.

There were a few tourists taking pictures of the torii, which was actually lit up a bit too brightly for my taste. Although my camera tried valiantly, the torii didn’t show up well in my shots. (Special thanks to William for taking some pics of the torii from his camera with my SD card.)

The most unique part of seeing the torii at night was that it was low tide, and we could walk out to the torii. Close up, you can see the whole logs they used to build the torii, and the gentle, natural curves of those logs.

Being so close to the torii, at night, with fewer tourists, made the experience feel much more personal than it had during the daytime. It made the torii feel more mystical. It’s only when you walk up to the torii that you can see the many coins scattered around its base by past visitors. Pretty cool.

The next day, we took the Miyajima Ropeway gondola up Mount Misen, the tallest mountain on the island.

The view from the top of the mountain was gorgeous—you can see south to Shikoku island. The mountains in the distance are layered behind each other—the view reminded me of Byron Bay, Australia. So lovely.

Similar to the Iwatayama Monkey Park in Arashiyama, Mount Misen also features a lot of wild monkeys, along with the obligatory monkey warning signs.

And before we left beautiful Miyajima, we had one more meal. For lunch, I ate udon with a side of anago-meshi, broiled sea eel over rice. Anago is another dish that Miyajima is famous for. It was pretty good, but not spectacular--your standard tasty eel, although the dish I had tasted reheated, alas.

Overall, though, Miyajima was peaceful, scenic, and delicious. Just the way I like it.

Next post: Hiroshima!

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It's ichigo daifuku season!

Daifuku is a traditional Japanese confection  made with pounded glutinous rice, or mochi, and stuffed with a sweet filling, typically red bean paste. Daifuku is, hands-down, my favorite kind of Japanese confection. And ichigo daifuku, or strawberry daifuku, is in season right now. This stuff is amazing, a daifuku with a whole, fresh strawberry on the inside and, often, red bean paste as well.

I take my role as a blogger very seriously, and I've been doing taste tests of as many ichigo daifuku (pronounced "ee-chee-goh" "dye-foo-koo") as I can get my hands on. The largest ichigo daifuku I've tried is the one seen in the picture above. It's an award-winning ichigo daifuku from Shimaya, a sweets shop located in the town of Katata, half an hour northeast of Kyoto. Their daifuku are huge, practically the size of my palm (who says size doesn't matter?), and they're stuffed with white bean paste and a big, sweet strawberry.

My favorite ichigo daifuku so far, though, is from the small daifuku shop around the corner from me. Yes, when I feel the winter blues, one of the things that perks me up is knowing that I am, literally, a minute away from a family-run daifuku shop. I stop there at least once a week, and the friendly owner there now recognizes me whenever I pass by (likely as the smiley girl who speaks broken Japanese and really, really likes daifuku).

The kind of ichigo daifuku she sells varies each day—sometimes they have bean paste and a strawberry inside them, and sometimes they have just a strawberry. They're simple and homemade, unpretentious and delicious.

The prettiest kind of ichigo daifuku I've seen features the strawberry perched on top of the mochi, like a crown. It's a less common style, but oh-so-pretty. I bought these from a confection stand at Keihan Sanjo station in Kyoto.

The green one had a green bean paste filling, while the white one had a red bean paste filling. Both were as delicious as they look.

Which, come to think of it, doesn't surprise me very much in this great, delicious country.

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Last weekend, I went to Kobe for the first time since December, to try Kobe beef (at last!) and to see Chinese New Year festivities in Kobe’s Chinatown.

A friend and I ate a multi-course Kobe beef lunch at Kobe Plaisir near Sannomiya station.

The beef was very good, with that rare umami flavor, but there was room for improvement. I hate to criticize something so luxurious as Kobe beef, but the honest truth is that the beef wasn't as good as I’d expected. I purposely ordered the sirloin cut, which is more fatty than the fillet cut (I like the fat), but it ended up being so fatty that I couldn't taste the actual beef very well.

Also, even though we ate teppanyaki style, fresh off the grill, the medium-rare cut was strangely cold. So cold that I couldn't help but think about it being meat, and the poor cow I was eating (does this mean I really will turn into a vegetarian, or at least a pescetarian, one of these days, as I sometimes suspect I will? What about my love for In 'n' Out?).

The meal was beautifully presented, though, and cooked with exquisite artistry by the chef at the grill in front of us. The way he worked those utensils was like a dance. He was also very gracious about my taking an endless number of pictures. (Note: I recently upgraded from my point-and-shoot to a digital SLR—I think it’s going to become my new best friend.)

The sides that came with the beef were delicious as well, including sashimi, a yummy potato pureed soup, and an excellent garlic fried rice that the chef fried right on the grill. Yum. Or, as they/we say here, oishii.

Below, pictures from the restaurant, as well as pictures from the very crowded Chinatown, where there was lion dancing, oodles of Japanese-influenced dim sum, and panda-themed vending machines.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

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Okay, I’ll admit it. The Japanese winter is getting to me. Even though the traditionally coldest time of year, Daikan, has officially ended, it is still friggin’ cold. Cold, grey, and quiet.

I’d been warned about this—winter is the hardest time in Japan for us English teachers. It’s bitterly cold, the euphoria of being in a new country—however charming it may be—has worn away, and you’re left with navigating between your apartment and school, and between classrooms and the staff room, in a country that doesn’t have central heating.

It really bites.

The funny thing is, though, that I don’t really miss America, in that I don’t find myself wishing I were there. I just wish I was more comfortable here, in Japan.

I miss people in America. I miss my dogs, I miss my car, and of course I miss being fluent and literate in the local language (also, I could really use an In ’n’ Out Burger one of these days), but America also feels very far away. It’s hard to imagine living there right now—and I don’t mean this in a superior, anti-America way, but in a mental way; I’ve been away for long enough in such a different and, at times, bewildering place that it really is hard for me to picture how my life was like in the United States.

I’ve lived abroad before—a year in Oxford, as a university student. That was different, though. It wasn’t as big of a break from how I lived my life (also, it helps that people speak English in England). It felt like less of a shift, since I knew I’d be returning to California after one tidy year. I wasn’t quite an adult yet, with all the messiness and freedom that comes with adulthood.

This time, the shift is bigger. I left a corporate career in Silicon Valley for travel, exploring, passion—the cynic in me cringes when I use the word “passion,” but that is, yes, the right word. All of this has been a huge change for historically overachieving, straight-and-narrow me (fine, I’m still overachieving, but not, I hope, so straight-and-narrow).

Often, I get frustrated with myself for not feeling 100% adjusted yet. And then I remind myself that I've only been here six months so far, which isn't really that long—although, good god, it feels much longer—and there are so many subtle and not-so-subtle strains to living here as an expat. It all adds up.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m in a self-imposed socio-psychological experiment—how long can I last in a place where I am scrambling to learn the language, where all the people I interact with are new to me, and where I’m not literate enough to read my own mail? Where the general mindset and manners of people I encounter often seem really different from what I’m used to, and silence often seems to be the preferred mode of communication? (Cue the not-so-subtle sense of strain.)

It will get better. Spring will come, and I’ll meet more people, explore more of Japan and the rest of Asia. It still feels right for me to be here, even when I feel cranky or gloomy or dazed about how, exactly, I ended up living in Japan.

And I will head back to America when the time is right, but for now, it feels far, far away.

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In the meantime, I want to do something outrageously fun. Think salsa, hip hop, gangsta rap. Any suggestions?

Below: I have a huge backlog of pictures that I haven’t posted yet. Here are some from Kyoto in December, during a fun day of Christmas shopping with a friend in the charming, winding streets near Kiyomizu-dera temple. The day included a spontaneous stop at a temple, and a delicious lunch at a hole-in-the-wall vegetarian place off of Shijo-dori in downtown Kyoto. It was so hole-in-the-wall that it was located at the very back of an alley, and the place doubles as the restaurant owner’s house, complete with cat figurines and actual sleeping cats.

Note: The geishas we saw were probably fakes.

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Today is Setsubun, which marks the end of Daikan, or the “Big Cold” period of winter in Japan, and celebrates the coming of spring.

At work today, one of my fellow teachers told me that, on Setsubun, children throw roasted soybeans, or mame, at people dressed up as demons. This is supposed to help ward off evil spirits in the coming year and to bring good luck.

During Setsubun, it is also customary, according to my coworker, to 1) eat a really long maki sushi roll, 2) eat it while facing southwest, and 3) eat the whole roll without talking.  Doing this will bring good luck. I have no problem with any of these requirements, so I stopped by a sushi stand on my way home from work today and bought a special Setsubun sushi roll, which is also the largest sushi roll I have ever eaten.

The sushi vendor had several kinds of Setsubun sushi rolls on sale, each of them the same long size, but with different fillings. I asked him which one he recommended, and he recommended the special, which turned out to have a combination of tofu, marinated vegetables and shitake mushrooms, and bits of unagi—yum.

(Side note: One of the things I love about Japan is that, whenever you ask a cashier/waiter/restaurant owner what is the recommended dish, I’ve generally found that they really do give you their honest recommendation, instead of, for example, the most expensive dish. True to this, the gruff-ish sushi vendor recommended the Setsubun roll that was on sale to me.)

The roll was huge—18 centimeters, or about 7 inches, long (yes, I measured it). It reminded me of a few things, which you can decide for yourself.

The tofu, vegetables, shitake mushrooms, and unagi were sweetly seasoned, the rice fresh. I ate all of it, facing southwest, without talking.

The roll also came with a packet of roasted soybeans, the kind you can throw to ward off bad luck. It is also lucky to eat one soybean for every year of your age. Lucky for me, there were exactly 18 soybeans in the packet.

Below, my Setsubun dinner (with a side of home-cooked udon).

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Not a bad view, huh? Because I don't eat enough Japanese food, I ate at this stunning Japanese-Italian fusion restaurant in Hong Kong. (More details on the meal in the picture gallery below.)

This week, I returned to freezing Japan, after two wonderful weeks in Hong Kong, aka the motherland, where I wholeheartedly stimulated the economy through shopping and eating, and spent good, quality time with friends and family.

I go back to Hong Kong every couple years or so to see my relatives (and, frankly, to shop), but now that I'm so close to HK, I will probably go back more often. After five months in Japan as a responsible, super-independent adult far from family and old friends, it was so nice to be babied and taken care of by my very nice relatives. And to be able to eavesdrop on people again! And talk to people, everywhere, in languages that I can speak fluently. Phew.

The minute I boarded the plane to Hong Kong in Kansai International Airport, I could feel the difference. People on the plane were chatty. They were brassy (publicly brassy, that is). They were also speaking…Cantonese.

Here are some of the things I enjoyed about being in Hong Kong (aside from the obvious, like, shopping):
  1. Using my cell phone whenever I damn well wanted to
  2. Not being stared at while reading English books on the trains
  3. There are public trash cans everywhere (Japan is very trash-can deficient)
  4. Eating meat, roasted meats! There’s nothing like Hong Kong’s barbecued pork, roasted pork, and soy sauce chicken.
  5. Dim sum. But I can’t talk too much about dim sum, or I’ll get homesick.

  6. Hong Kong cafes, where I can order Horlicks, milk tea, hot lemon tea, congee, afternoon tea sets, and more goodies.
  7. Salted fish and chicken fried rice, rice noodles in soup with fish balls (not those kinds of balls)
  8. There’s English everywhere!

Here are some things I appreciate about being back in Japan:
  1. The customer service—they really do have the best customer service here of any country I’ve visited
  2. The udon, the sashimi
  3. There’s a vending machine every 2 feet (pardon me, every 2 meters)
  4. Their gorgeous desserts. It's strawberry season, which means I can eat things like this:

  5. The delivery services—I got my 28-kg suitcase delivered to my door from the airport for 1870 yen (less than $21 US).
  6. The quiet on the trains (although I do appreciate the Hong Kong brassiness)
  7. Kyoto
  8. The surprises. I’m still learning.

Below, more pictures from Hong Kong:
  1. View of Hong Kong nightscape from Victoria Peak. This view gave me such an overwhelming sense of pride for my birthplace. Hong Kong really is stunning.
  2. Nighttime on the Peak
  3. Hiking near Victoria Peak on Christmas Day
  4. I think everyone should hike with at least four corgis.
  5. Durian-stuffed rolls for dessert with my friend Lina, the intrepid traveler and blogger. My first taste of durian! It turns out that that smell of garbage I’ve always encountered in Chinatowns was actually the smell of durian. It smells like garbage, but tastes sweet, a bit nutty, and pulpy—weird.
  6. Interior of Aqua, a Japanese-Italian fusion restaurant at the top of One Peking Road, Tsim Tsa Tsui.
  7. I had a gloriously buttery miso-grilled black cod set at Aqua.
  8. For dessert, half-baked chocolate cake with hazelnut ice cream. Yum.
  9.  Prawn curry at Thai Basil restaurant at Pacific Place, Admiralty.
 10. Fish cake and spring roll platter.
 11. For dessert, pumpkin with ice cream and cotton candy!
 12. Dim sum at Lei Garden. They are rated one-star by Michelin, and oh, do they deserve it. The roasted pork there and their “snowy mountain” egg custard buns are the best I've had anywhere.

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Last weekend, I went to Kobe to see the Luminarie, a light festival held every December to commemorate the Great Hanshin earthquake, the devastating earthquake that leveled Kobe in 1995. This year’s Luminarie was held from December 3 to 14.

Before the Luminarie began for the night, I explored Kobe a little by foot. It was only my second time in Kobe—the first time was for an errand-type trip for groceries from Kobe’s Chinatown and household goods from Kobe’s Ikea (which, incidentally, is exactly like every other Ikea I’ve visited in the US, down to the layout and meatball sauce—it’s strangely comforting, as if stepping through the doors of Kobe’s Ikea beams you into the Ikea of Anywhere, California).

Kobe is an attractive, walkable port city with mountains on one side and the Inland Sea on the other. It reminds me of San Francisco—something about the grayish shade of light there, its closeness to the water, and the grayness and newness of the buildings (compared to the rest of Japan, which, for the most part, is freaking old).

As I mentioned, there’s even a Chinatown, Nankin-machi, which is one of only about three Chinatowns in Japan (there is also one in Nagasaki, and the biggest one is in Yokohama).

Before the light festival, I walked through Chinatown to Meriken Park, which is on the harbor. It includes Kobe Port Tower, the Kobe Maritime Museum, and a memorial to the Great Hanshin earthquake victims.

I also visited Harborland, which is a shopping and amusement park area, with a picturesque shopping complex called Mosaic. Mosaic has a small park called Mosaic Garden, which overlooks a ferris wheel and amusement park below.

In Mosaic Garden, there is also a special gazebo for the holidays called, “Shakehands.” You step inside the gazebo with that special someone, each put one hand on a metal grip in the middle of the gazebo, and then you use your free hand to shake hands with the other person. When you shake hands, voila! The gazebo lights up blue. What better way to display your affection during the holiday season than by shaking hands?

Trivia: In America, Christmas is a time for families to gather, while New Year’s Eve is for couples. In Japan, New Year’s Eve is when you spend quality time with the family. Christmas is for a different sort of quality time.

And one of my favorite parts of my visit to Mosaic? Snow! Fake snow, that is. At five o’clock, frenetic Christmas music started to play in the mall and fake snow blew overhead. Another one of those sneaky, delightful surprises I often encounter these days.

After I visited Mosaic, it was dusk, and I walked over to the Marutamachi area, where the walking route to the light festival began. The crowds were incredible. It was the last Saturday of the festival, and there were literally thousands of people lined up in the streets, as if it were a New Year’s Eve party.

The city had blocked off several streets for crowd control, and there was a carefully mapped route that the crowds followed to get to the actual streets where the light displays were. It took at least an hour-and-a-half to walk from the start of the route to the light displays, which were really only a few blocks away, near Sannomiya station. It was an orderly crowd, though (yay, Japan!), of mostly couples and families.

The actual light display begins with an arcade of lights that arch over a few blocks of streets. The lights are colorful and gaudy. The Italian government donated the lights, which are each individually hand-painted. Unfortunately, my camera doesn’t do too well with nighttime shots, but you get the general picture (no pun intended).

After walking through the arcade, you walk up into a small park that has a grand, ornate circular set-up of lights that resembles an oversized gazebo of lights.

It was pretty, and yet it also reminded me of a cross between Caesar’s Palace and It’s a Small World—as if the inside of a casino had been transported to downtown Kobe. I prefer something a little more subtle. The onlookers were all delighted by the lights, though, and took plenty of pictures (like me!).

As with any good festival in Japan, one of the best parts of the festival was the street food. There were multiple blocks of food stands, with okonomiyaki (a sort of Japanese “pancake”), taiyaki (a fish-shaped waffle stuffed with red bean paste or chocolate), takoyaki (fried balls of dough with octopus meat inside), and much more.

I had some karaage (deep fried chicken) and these adorable little egg waffles that I didn’t know the name of—no pictures of them this time, though! I was too busy stuffing my face.

As I head off on my holiday travels, I wish you and yours a very happy holiday season, and the best New Year’s yet.

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Leaf-peeping season in Japan is, sadly, over. I thought this would be a good time to post some more pictures I took during my leaf-peeping outings that, for one reason or another, were not up to my (admittedly perfectionistic) standards, and so didn’t go into my original posts.

In addition to visiting Takao, Ishiyama-dera, and Arashiyama, I also visited the Hiyoshi Taisha shrine for leaf-peeping.

Hiyoshi Taisha is at the base of Mt. Hiei, north of Kyoto. Unfortunately, the day that I visited, it was raining and bitterly cold, and my photos ended up being all invariably blurry--which makes for interesting moody-type pictures, but not much clarity. Some of them still struck me, though, so here they are.

In spite of the rain and cold that day, the red maple leaf colors were still stunning. Some of the falling red leaves even ended up sticking to the top of my umbrella--I could see their leafy silhouettes from the underside of the umbrella--which I like to think is a lucky sign.

Below: Pictures from Hiyoshi Taisha, Ishiyama-dera, and the bamboo forest in Arashiyama.

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I recently visited a monkey park for the first time, in the Arashiyama district of western Kyoto. Japan is, apparently, just brimming full of wild monkeys—I have heard many stories about the run-ins that different English teachers have had with monkeys in the mountains or forests, in the countryside, and even (or especially) in an outhouse.

The monkeys at Iwatayama Monkey Park are all wild and freely roam the park, which is on Mount Arashiyama, near the Togetsukyo Bridge (which is famous, incidentally, for its view of the nearby mountains in leaf-peeping season).

The walk up Mount Arashiyama is somewhat steep, with tall trees lining both sides of the trail. Along the way, before you have actually seen any monkeys, are ominous-looking signs, warning you not to show the monkeys any food, give them any food, or look them in the eye (direct eye contact can be seen by the monkeys as a sign of aggression—they’re very sensitive, just like you and I).

Eventually, you get to a bend in the road and take a smaller path up towards an overlook point, which is where the majority of the monkeys are. On the overlook point, which also offers a generous view of Kyoto, the monkeys freely frolic (pardon the alliteration), and caretakers keep the more aggressive monkeys in line with the help of a broom (I don't think PETA would like this very much). You can also go into a small cabin to feed the monkeys (the humans go inside and feed the monkeys outside, through wire-fence windows).

The monkeys are what I expected monkeys to be like: red-faced, red-bottomed, flea-picking, aggressive. Your typical monkey. The ones at Iwatayama are Japanese macaque monkeys. None of them bothered me, but I did see one baring its teeth at an innocent-looking gentleman who just happened to walk by it.

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A few weeks ago—on Halloween day, in fact—I went on one of the most beautiful hikes I’ve ever been on, in the Kiso Valley. The Kiso Valley is nestled among the Japanese Alps in Nagano prefecture.

A friend and I hiked from the town of Magome to the town of Tsumago, on the old Nakasendo highway (an ancient road that connected Tokyo to Kyoto—think of the Via Appia in ancient Rome, but substitute udon for whatever it is that Romans ate).

Both Magome and Tsumago are historic, carefully restored post-towns, resting points along the Nakasendo highway for travelers during the Edo era. The hike between them was only about 2.5 hours long (my kind of hike!), on well-maintained trails, and took us through forests and farmland, up and down through a mountain pass, and past waterfalls and small sleepy neighborhoods. The trees were not as red as they were in my last post in Takao, but they were, nevertheless, oh-so-pretty in their lushness and greenness.

Magome is bigger and more bustling than Tsumago. Its main street was full of craft shops, snack shops, restaurants, and tourists.

It was a sunny day, and even the man-sized Hello Kitty rice crackers on display seemed to smile at me (maybe because they were, in fact, smiling. Okay, not the Hello Kitty one, but the Doraemon one most definitely).

Before starting any hike, it's essential to eat right. And what better way to eat before a hike than with soba? (Actually, udon would be better, but soba seems to be much more common in the Nagano area.) The soba we had was delicious, complete with an egg, mushrooms, seaweed, and a pureed mixture of yam that you pour into the soba noodles and makes the soup strangely fizzy.

Shortly after we left Magome, we went up one section of the trail that was paved with red and white stones. It took me a second before realizing that they had paved the path to look like it was covered with cherry blossom petals.

This is the kind of thing that just gets me about Japan—there is so much care taken to make things beautiful in a detailed, thoughtful way. Being lucky enough to come from a gorgeous part of California, I've often seen a lot of natural beauty, but not such meticulous beauty. Did I mention that, at the Ginkaku-ji temple in Kyoto a few weeks ago, I saw a man dusting the rocks in the Zen garden?

Along the hike, we passed by waterfalls and streams and crossed wooden bridges.

Speaking of detail and thoughtfulness, we also passed by a wooden fountain, complete with a set of porcelain cups, where you could stop for water.

Tsumago is a tiny, quaint town, and perhaps because of its size and the smaller number of tourists there--it was almost dusk by the time we arrived--it felt more personal than Magome. We stayed for a night at a historic ryokan, Matsushiro-ya, which first opened in 1804.

Being historic and traditional, the inn had tatami rooms complete with sliding paper doors (note: paper makes for thin walls).

Our stay included dinner and breakfast. Dinner, as expected, was the more elaborate of the two meals—including local specialties such as carp sashimi, river fish with a glazed sauce (as well as miscellaneous fish parts stuffed inside it), and numerous smaller appetizers of tofu and preserved vegetables.

Similar to what I had in Takao, there was also an unhappy-looking grilled, salted river fish pouting at me.

The food was not the best I’ve had in Japan, but decent and filling in a home-style, yet still elaborate sort of way.

After dinner, we went outside to explore Tsumago by night. The main street was deserted, dark, and cold. It was quiet, except for the occasional tourists we passed, some of whom wore yukata and clanking wooden clogs, or geta, from whichever ryokan they were staying at. It felt peaceful, and yet spooky, too. My camera didn't do too well capturing the dark street, but it did capture the street lanterns.

The inn owner also gave us a lantern to light our way.

The next day, I took a morning walk in Tsumago by myself. It was misty and drizzly, and the shop owners were just beginning to start their day. I felt like I had the whole town to myself.

When we left Tsumago, we hiked to the nearby town of Nagiso to take the train home. The trail passed right through the grounds of a Buddhist temple. We stopped there to rest and just to admire the autumn scenery and the mountains nearby.

I've been in Japan for nearly four months now. The weather is changing to an intense cold, and homesickness sometimes feels just around the corner. But having quiet moments in hidden temples--that makes up just one of the unanticipated reasons I came here on this adventure.

Below: Pictures from my morning walk in Tsumago and also more hiking pictures.

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Last weekend, I went to the village of Takao, in the mountains of northwest Kyoto. It’s the start of leaf-peeping season in the Kansai region, so I went with a friend to Takao to visit three temples that are famous for their autumn leaves.

Autumn leaf-peeping, especially of the gorgeous Japanese maple trees—known as momiji in Japanese--is a major past-time in Japan. Temples and parks become crowded at this time of year with hordes of spectators eager to see the vibrant reds and oranges of the momiji. There are even websites with autumn leaf status reports that you can view. My aunt, who is a frequent traveler to Japan, told me that even the local newspapers will feature regular autumn leaf updates. But being currently illiterate, I haven’t checked a newspaper yet to confirm this!

The temples we visited were: Kozan-ji, Jingo-ji, and Saimyo-ji. Kozan-ji is a series of temple buildings spread at multiple levels along a mountainside, with crumbling stone stairways and long stone paths connecting you between the buildings. The trees are so tall and dense there, that it felt more like I was in a forest than that I was visiting a temple in a forest.

The leaves have only just started changing at Kozan-ji, so there was mostly greenery, but what a glorious green they were.

Kozan-ji also happens to feature a set of scrolls that are known as the world’s first manga. (They show happy rabbits, frogs, and monkeys carousing with each other, if you must know. And not carousing in that way.)

The scrolls are housed in a very traditional-looking wooden building (that's my technical term for it) with lovely greenery surrounding it.

Jingo-ji is supposed to be the most famous of the three temples in Takao, but I have to say it was my least favorite in terms of scenery. Its buildings are spread out through a wide, open (i.e. not very tree-filled) area.

The trees around there—at least in the parts that we saw—weren’t dense enough or orange enough for good picture-taking. The climb to Jingo-ji, though, was an excellent way to work off lunch. There are a good few sets of long, steep stone steps that take you up a mountain before you reach the temple.

You do pass by a few udon restaurants on the way, though, which pretty much makes up for everything.

My favorite temple of the three was Saimyo-ji. The scenery there was so beautiful, that I found myself saying over and over again, “This is so beautiful, this is so beautiful” and feeling completely unsatisfied with that word. The greens and oranges and reds there were simply dazzling. And it wasn’t even the height of the fall foliage season yet!

Saimyo-ji also felt the most intimate out of the three temples. All of its temple buildings are close together in a fairly small, park-like area, with a friendly dirt path leading you through the temple grounds.

One of the highlights of the day was our lunch at a traditional restaurant by the river in Takao. We found the restaurant at random on our way to Saimyo-ji—which is really one of my favorite ways to figure out where to eat when traveling, through stumbling. We ate in one of the restaurant’s rustic wooden buildings overlooking the river (the restaurant has a handful of these small buildings by the river; each building is the size of a small room and has one wall of sliding doors that is left open to let in the air). We sat on the tatami floor, by large, open windows, with a view of the maple trees and the rushing water below.

Lunch was a multi-course feast of sweet river trout in a glazed sauce, a small salted fish that kept staring grudgingly at me, small appetizers (preserved veggies, tofu, the usual), and some seasonal small plates, including unagi over rice in a hollowed-out section of bamboo. The food, the river, the tatami, the maple trees—all gave me one of those, “OMFG, I really am in Japan” moments, where I want to laugh and kind of want to weep—in a very joyous way—at the same time.

After lunch, we took pictures around the paths near the restaurant—which was yet another one of my favorite parts of the day.

Below: Pictures from near the restaurant and also more pictures from Saimyo-ji

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I’ve been in Japan for three months. This means I’m starting my blog three months late. It also means I’ve been very busy living in the moment, as they say, which is all the rage these days and is, more importantly, something I typically have trouble doing but have become more at ease with this past revolutionary year.

Here are my goals for this blog:
    1. To write, in a not-too-serious manner (I often take writing way too seriously)
    2. To give myself a formal (and informal) place to record assorted memories in Japan. These memories will revolve around my three main priorities in Japan (and in general!): food, traveling, writing.
    3. To have a place to collect and share my pictures—more and more, I’m becoming an avid photographer
    4. To have an informal place to keep in touch with friends, colleagues, and family
    5. To create one more piece to my life in Japan, and a writing piece, no less!

I want to write with heart, and to be as funny as I humbly think I can be. And to have fun. Loads.

Inset: The start of the Magome-Tsumago hiking trail, in Magome, Kiso Valley, Japan.

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