Kyoto, Kiki and Jiji

After lots of fun with the family we went off to explore Kyoto. Speed limits on motorways here are Very Slow so there's lots of time to check out whats going on around you. For example, we drove along side a gang of bikers for quite a while on the road to Kobe.

Awesome.

I have noticed a lot of people sleeping on public transport or generally in public here. I guess people work a lot longer and harder but also people don't really seem to steal here so you can relax without worrying that you will wake up to find all of your possessions gone! The guy in the overalls had cool glasses.

ZZZzzzzzzZZZzzzzzZZzzzz.....

I think I've eaten McDonalds about twice in the past 10 years but someone said you have to try the Teriyaki Fillet-o. You don't. McDonalds is disgusting, even in Japan.

MISTAKE

There are many birds of prey here.

I don't really have many digital pictures from here.... also we spent a lot of the time just walking and walking and walking which was nice but I can't show you. I spent a lot of time walking in circles while Rowan did Proper Photography.

Then we went here:

Manga Museum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Starbucks' Sakura range for the cherry blossom season, made with cherry blossom. Sickly sweet and girly pink.

Gion, we MIGHT have seen a couple of Geishas... but not sure.

This is in the equivalent of Chicken Cottage. Mine is a pork curry with soup rice and an egg. Much nicer than it looks/sounds!

'Studenty'

Our hostel in Kyoto. If I knew what it was called I would not recommend it. For £25 a night we basically slept on the floor of a student's house (I know that's a picture of a bunk bed but there was mold and pubes.) It was right next to Kyoto University though, so it was cool seeing my Japanese counterparts.

I bought a Kimono!

The lady tried to teach me how to tie it... I forgot.

I've been surprised how many women do walk around in kimonos and the sandals with toe-socks. Mostly it seems to be elegant middle-aged and older ladies who look absolutely stunning and have the most intricate hairstyles. Also quite a few 20somethings, perhaps just for special occasions and they have equally fancy hairstyles but always with a section that is backcombed and fluffed like a catwalk style.

We were only in Kyoto for a few days before moving on to visit Osaka. I think I will need to do a follow-up to this when I get my films back since it seems a bit bare without the MILLIONS of pictures of cherry blossom and cats... But for now, it was time for one last coffee before we went to the station...

Iced Coffee

Rowan had crazy curry with rice, beef, egg AND cheese!?!

I was craving cheesiness so I had 'pizza-toast'

We spent at least two hours running around the station before we went to buy our tickets. The building is Amazing. On the roof there is a garden with a plaque explaining how it represents the bridge between Old and New Kyoto and how it symbolizes going down a mountain into a valley but it was a but pretentious and badly translated so I can't really explain! It is like having a valley between two mountains though, and going across the top like a rope bridge is....

The SKYWAY!

Descending from the Skyway

Oh and you may be wondering where Jiji comes into this. While we were in Kyoto it was our 2 year anniversary so Row bought me a kitten-sized Jiji, because I am obviously Kiki (I had a black cat until recently and she has the same hair as me) and he got a dust sprite which I guess makes him.... Totoro?

We went for dinner at a sushi restaurant and ate until we got eat no more and got tipsy on sake. Very fun!

Bye Bye Kyoto!

幸せな猫を持っている希望

=^..^=
xxx

Totoro To-to-ro...

After the wedding the whole English side of the family spent the day in Nara and went up to the park where there's a lot of fairly tame deer.  Which I didn't take any pictures of on digital. Damn!
(Me and Row have several cameras between us so the pictures are a bit jumbled.)
In fact I think there are a lot of pictures from that day on film so here are just a couple:

Rowan spotted an awesome beetle!

In the cafe where we stopped for lunch they had cats on the light-switches! I like a lot.

I planned on taking pictures of all the exciting food I had but here we had curry which looks disgusting in the photo even though it was really delicious. 

Inside Kofukuji Temple

Outide Kofukuji Temple

We stopped off at a service station for lunch. Why do they not serve food like this at 'Welcome Break' and stuff?! And I think it was cheaper than a panini from Costa as well!

The next day we visited Himeji Castle which is sadly covered in scaffolding at the moment but still pretty cool with a lovely view. You go up in a lift with a glass wall so you see all the layers of stones in the castle and then they have built this observation building so you can look close up at the roof and how the reconstruction happens.

Rowan and his godson

 We also visited Bizen to see the pottery. But I was more interested in the plantpot...

One of the Bizen potters at work... I bought a teeny little cat since it was all a bit out of my price range

Okonomiyaki which is described as a pancake or a pizza but it just isn't! It is egg and lettuce and port and some sort of brown sauce, pickled ginger and you drizzle mayo all over it as well?! But actually delicious and so filling!

This was a little cafe right by the pottery area. I love how you are given free water and often green tea with your food. That is just how it should be. 

It was when we were in here that we saw on the news about one of the quite large aftershocks. Being in the Kansai district, we didn't really see any of the aftereffects of the tsunami and we couldn't feel any tremors. The main things we noticed were that a) we were basically the only Westerners wherever we went and b) people coming up to us to practice there English was always ask us to tell everyone at home that it is safe to visit Japan and safe to trade (after asking if we knew David Beckham/ Prince Charles etc.) So I know I haven't really been talking about the tsunami, but that is just because on our trip everything has been continuing as normal.

After the pottery we decided to stop off at the Okayama Korakuen Garden which was extremely pretty... 

Koi!

=^..^=

We were staying up into the countryside to a place called Hattoji which was basically just like My Neighbor Totoro (if you haven't see it, go and watch it right now.)

The house in Totoro

We went for a nice cycle ride and there was a shrine up a hill just next to us and lots of pretty streams. More pictures soon but here are a couple of the inside for now:

The table with blankets just in front of me is the most awesome thing. It is heated from the underside so you all sit around it with your legs underneath since it gets pretty cold at night, even at this time of year! And we cooked a lot of out food on that open fire in the middle there and sat on cushions eating around it

This was our room.

This is like the 'master bedroom'

This is what we did.

AND THIS IS THE BATH!

Just like this!

The bath was so awesome its basically worth going just for that. Its a massive metal barrel thing which is really deep, sitting at the bottom of it I had to tilt my head back to keep my mouth out of the water, and its almost as good as going to the onsen!

LOADS more pictures to come for this one!

xxx

Soya Milk Skin

Rowan's Kosher plane food. (He signed me up for Hindu non-vegetarian which was far less exciting)

Tired and jet-lagged, we arrived to be confronted with this. It does SO much more than just flush!

^_^

At Rowan's cousin's wedding, we became the tourist attraction!

I feel very privileged to have attended a Shinto Wedding, seriously awesome experience!

Inside the Shrine

This is a rubbish picture but I just wanted to show how incredible Yuri's outfit was! And it looks like it might be fairly comfy like a really really fancy duvet

We were all asked to sign the guestbook and everyone else signed in Japanese so we tried to translate our names, Rowan's and mine are translating the meaning (Jasmine and Rowan tree) and Ewan's should be phoenetic....

Course 1: many types of fish

Course 2: Marinade of salmon with confit of ginger and seaweed sauce

Rowan had to do a bizzare walkabout for his role as Godfather to Yuri and Andrew's baby

'Dessert of Happiness' (I managed to not photograph 3 courses in between - 'Otsukuri', 'Present from the sea' and 'Bressing from the earth' - I guess I was too hungry)

Yuri's friends did a dance performance to Abba's 'Dancing Queen' (Rowan's little brother also did a karaoke to Wonderwall but I had to delete the video)

We arrived in Nara dazed and confused on Friday evening after leaving London on Thursday morning. After a few minor mishaps along the way everything went pretty well. We watched many, many films. Tron is rubbish. If you haven't see it and end up watching it for some reason, consider; Emperor Nero, Gladiatorial games vs. Jesus and the Father-son-holy spirit. This will simultaneously make it more interesting and reveal how dull and unoriginal the Entire Film is. Toy Story 3 is amazing, WHY DOES IT HAVE SUCH A STRONG EMOTIONAL EFFECT!? There were other films but by then I was going in and out of sleep and I can no longer remember. 

Andrew (the groom) met us from the bus in Tenri and then we went to meet his brother at the station. This is how helpful Japanese people are/ how few tourists there are here at the moment: Andrew's brother had left the train at the wrong stop and a Japanese lady came up to us to try to explain where he was when she saw us waiting on the platform. How nice!

Japanese weddings are fairly strange. The Shinto part was lovely and very interesting, I went to a Buddhist wedding a few years ago so I thought there might be some similarities but it was pretty different, I guess because it originates from Samurai traditions rather then monks'. It was the dinner bit that was bizarre. It began with a spotlight entrance of the bride and groom to James Blunt's 'Beautiful'. Then photos. This was followed imediately by the cutting of the cake and the bride and groom shoving of large quantities of cake into each other's faces in the style of a Japanese gameshow. Then photos. Then the first course. Speech and photos. Second course. Speech and photos. etc.

Lots of beer and sake. Lots of fun!

私はすぐに書き込みします！

xxx