Jeff

Been a bit, meant to write this on the flight home, but it ended up being on this old 747 which was an unpleasant flight back. But now I am recovering from the jetlag and trying to organize everything back into a normal day to day life. Found that I kind of missed work. Interesting things are always happening at the office these days, so that is good. Hopefully by the end of the month, I will have gone through all the photos on flickr and properly captioned them. Anyways, back to the trip.

After Arashiyama, the next day we decided to visit Kinkakuji, which is supposed to be the #1 attraction to see in Kyoto. Kim had talked about trying to use cabs as a good form of transport around the city, so we opted to give one a shot. The cabs in Japan are very courteous and I have never seen a typical “cabbie” as I often experience back in the US. The issue was that the cost was very high and the ride was not fast. We opted to just stick to using buses and trains, as they are cheaper and weren’t really much slower than the cab.

When we arrived at the temple, it was packed. They were not kidding when it was said this was the biggest attraction in Kyoto. When we finally managed to get to the temple, it was magnificent. Kinkakuji means “Golden Pavilion” and is this small pavilion seated on the end of this tranquil pond. It really looks amazing, even with a ton of obnoxious tourists walking all over the place (more on that in a possible post). The weather was a bit meh, but the grounds were very amazing looking, with some nice ponds and waterfalls. But at the end of the walk, there was this obnoxious tourist shop area, that was clogged with people. Really dampened the mood of the beautiful area we had just seen.

After the temple, we walked to this zen temple called Ryoanji. It was a lot less crowded and had some amazing grounds around the temple itself. The zen garden was really cool and had this (unblossomed) sakura tree that peaked over the wall in the center that would have looked glorious. I think I will try my hardest to get a sakura tree whenever I own a yard worth having one. The grounds outside had this really nice lake with a small temple in the middle on an island and a lot of nice forest around. There were a number of blossomed sakura trees around the grounds that gave us a chance to take pictures not full of Japanese tourists.

The next day, we decided to make the trip down to Nara, the first capitol of Japan, predating Kyoto. A lot of the temples and such are clustered in this large park that is known for all the deer in it. The deer are there because legend says that the deity of the shinto shrine rode one of the deers into the park. We did not make it to the shrine however. It was really raining all day, so it was overcast and we were not really excited to be getting too wet. We ventured up to see Todaiji temple, it is a huge wooden hall housing one of the largest bronze buddhas in the world. The temple is really awesome to see due to the great wooden architecture, age (some of the wood looked ancient), and the crazy statues of Buddhist deities everywhere. The wooden hall is supposed to be one of the largest wooden structures in the world, it used to be larger until it was burnt down.

On our final day in Kyoto, we finally walked to go see the Toji temple that was just south of us. I had put it off for a while, hoping that the sakura would bloom, it is supposed to be amazing with the sakura bloomed. The temple grounds are really awesome because of how they are just sort of dropped in the middle of the city, yet remain tranquil and picturesque. The main attraction is this giant pagoda in the middle of these really well done gardens. They had a shidarezakura or “weeping cherry” that was displayed prominently at the front of the gardens. We took some pictures throughout the grounds. Afterwards, we went back up to the large shopping streets to get some Japanese pickled vegetables (I need to figure out how to make my own) and wander around the shopping streets.

The next day we travelled to Tokyo via Shinkansen. I will try to write about that in a third (and final) post.

tagged with:
• vacations
• travel
• japan

Heh, haven’t posted anything on here in forever, doubt anyone still reads this, but whatever… This is the first of (hopefully) a few posts about this trip. It would be nice if I got back to posting more than once a year. Anyways, we are currently on vacation in Japan. Staying in Kyoto after a short stay in Osaka…

In Osaka, we spent 2 days, the first was a day of orientation where we went and got the shinkansen tickets to get to Tokyo later, I got an IC card for the trains (which is much easier), and then we explored the Umeda area (where we were staying). We checked out some of the malls and wondered around the area (and found this covered shopping street). It is really a different country, different in how people act around one another, different in how restaurants operate, different in how malls are set up and operated, and different in how people do their shopping. Having been here before, it still takes some adjustment to begin to operate and thrive in such a wildly different culture. Osaka was a good entry point into this culture as it lacks the bustle of Tokyo and the cultural style and rustic roots of Kyoto.

Our second day in Osaka, we wanted to go to Kobe and have some real Kobe beef. Kim did some research and had a list of a few places and we opted for the area around one of the stations. We got there early and explored the area and decided on a place. While waiting for it to open, we played some Taiko at an arcade and then explored Tokyu Hands (a DIY store common in Japan). There we found some of these little tea containers that where similar to one I purchased 4 years ago and I really liked, so we bought a few to store our other loose leaf tea in. The lunch was hibachi style, and the beef was super tender. It was not a lot, but that is more of a cultural thing with meal sizes than it was with the place we chose. I could have done with probably twice the serving size, but when in Rome, ya know? In the afternoon, we went to visit the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum. There we got to make our own cup noodles, mine has a curry stock with roast pork, shrimp, green onions, and garlic chips. Before dinner, we visited (what Kim claims) is the first cat cafe in Osaka, where we spent an hour amusing ourselves with the cats they had (there was one who looked very similar to Deedee and had her demeanor).

While we are in Japan, the annual spring high school baseball tournament has been going on. It is held at the Koshien stadium (home to the NPB Tigers), for which it is often referred to as. Kim has been amused by my annoyance with the Japanese style of baseball and my sarcastic predictions of what is about to happen (and usually it is correct). The pitching style is pure hard pitches with little control and variance in pitch style. Coaches/managers will play the same pitcher for a whole game, regardless of his condition (watched one play the same kid for 15 innings, even after getting knocked around a few times). The blind use of the sacrifice bunt (even having the 3 or 4 hole guys bunt a runner to second) is also particularly frustrating. But it is also baseball, and it is being played in a country that loves the game. So I have it on almost all the time.

We then went to Kyoto, the old capital of the country. It is very rich in tradition with a lot of temples and shrines (temples are usually Buddhist and the shrines are usually for Shinto). After arriving, we went and saw a nearby temple that is supposed to be the largest wooden structure and the center of a Japanese sect of Buddhism. It is a very impressive structure with the architecture that is very east Asian, much like the stuff we saw while in Seoul (albeit much less colorful). The wood struts are particularly awesome, along with the really nice tile roofing they use all over Kyoto. Due to the cold winter, it seems like the sakura will not be in full bloom while we are in Japan, which adds a sort of sourness to most of the scenery, as there are a lot of sakura trees with buds waiting to be released.

The first full day in Kyoto, we went Nishiki market, this long food oriented market street. We tried a bunch of different things, Kim really liked the pickled stuff in one shop, we will probably go back and get some before leaving Kyoto. After lunch, we went across the river into Gion, the district known for Geisha/Maiko. It was raining a lot, so we didn’t do too much exploring, but we did walk down the main road where the geisha houses are located. Many of the compounds are amazing looking with ornate front gates and small gardens inside that peak over the front fence. At the end of the road, there is a really awesome Zen Buddhist temple called Kenninji that we went into and explored. There was a nice meditation garden and a very beautiful grounds to walk around and see. The main hall has this amazing ceiling mural of twin dragons.

We went to Fushimi Inari on our second day. It is a very iconic temple, seen in many movies, and known for the many torii that are donated by businesses (the shrine is considered the main shrine for the patron of business in Shinto). This lends to some amazing places where you walk through a sort of red hallway in the middle of this lush green landscape on a mountain side in a southern Kyoto neighborhood. The issue with visiting it is how popular and crowded it is. But man is it something to behold. After visiting the shrine, we took a train up to Gion and visited the main shrine there. I then went up to see the Kiyomizu dera temple, which is known for this amazing visual along the main hall, overlooking Kyoto. There are many great shots of it and they work in just about any season. The view was amazing and there are some awesome shopping streets leading up to the temple. Sadly, Kim was feeling tired, so she stuck back and hung out in a coffeeshop in Gion.

Yesterday, we went to western Kyoto, an area called Arashiyama, which I wanted to visit to see this awesome bamboo grove. Like just about everywhere else we have gone in Kyoto, it is crowded as hell, but looked amazing as well. The grove is really a sight to behold with the almost pure green colors and tranquil path through the trees. Before (or after going through the grove) we visited this beautiful Zen Buddhist temple called Tenryuji that had some very amazing looking gardens and this really incredible looking Japanese garden. I am of the mind to eventually have a Japanese style garden whenever we have a house, but it is probably too much work and the mood will pass.

tagged with:
• vacations
• travel
• japan

I have heard and watched a few discussions on the idea of happiness. Not what makes someone happy but why certain people are happy and others not. The main discussion uses a comparison by trying to find the profile of those that are often more likely to be unhappy and those that are happy. The results are interesting, as people seem happier in worse conditions and those in great conditions seem to be more unhappy. I think this is caused by a bias in terms of what each defines as happy and has been something I have made an active effort to counteract.

Successful (in a global sense, so a solid job, certain home, food every night) people are considerably less happy than those who are struggling. Some theories range from survival instinct gives great mental rewards for succeeding in harsh conditions to the idea that people generally want a reason to be unhappy and those in successful positions end up always being unhappy due to the lack of obvious reasons. For me, it is more the latter than the former. Successful people seem to blow small things out of proportion as they are not checked into global reality for most of their day. Okay, that sounds cynical and mean, let me explain it better. In the day to day life of those who struggle to eat and sleep in mud huts or are in constant danger of being dragged into a war, small victories such as a good meal reward them with a positive reward as it is a big thing for them and they value these conditions. If the waiter is a bit slow for the meal is not a worry for them. Whereas those who are in a situation and life where many of those easy but small victories are expected, they find it harder to enjoy those facts and begin to dwell on “petty” issues. Things like getting stuck in traffic make them unhappy and ruin their days. The cause of this is that their status quo for life is very much higher than those who are much worse off. This causes a perspective shift that blows something as small as traffic out to be the negative equivalent of not getting a meal, but the positive reward of getting out of traffic is not equivalent of getting that much needed meal.

I have tried to keep perspective these past few years. When my flight gets delayed it is easy to get upset about having to spend an extra hour in an airport, but it is also easy to think that spending an extra hour in an airport is a pretty small problem to have in life. When the bed was pretty horrible in the apartment we stayed at in Hong Kong, it would have been easy to get annoyed/upset about it. But the real fact was that we were in our mid 20’s, employed, and could afford to spend the week of New Years in Hong Kong, and do so comfortably (financially at least). If we let a small thing like a bad bed ruin the rest of the overall great experience, we would have thrown out everything we worked for. It is easy to dwell on the small losses and lose sight of the big victories, because we have been trained to focus on the small and miss the large. There is a sort of pressure to expect the big picture and get lost in the details. People who complain that the kitchen doesn’t have a gas stove or the internet provider is bad (that is me) are the ones who miss the fact that they are able to afford to rent a great apartment in an enjoyable and (more importantly) safe area.

So I plead with you (whoever actually reads this) to continue to look at the big picture and let the small details become laughably petty. When Kim gets upset about some small detail and I laugh at her, she knows that I am laughing at the exaggeration and not her issue (like fighting about laundry or being annoyed by a rise in gas prices). Next time you have a good meal, remember how good the food was and not that the waitress’ breath smelled or she took a while to get you your check. When you drive home and have traffic, remember that you just got paid to do something that you (hopefully) enjoy and that you are on your way home to eat whatever you want and sleep in your own bed.

tagged with:
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• philosophical