4th of July in Japan's old capital

For July 4th, Raymond gets 4 and a half days off. Yep, your tax dollars hard at work -- paying for our very patriotic trip to the old capital of another country. List of cities on our agenda this time is Himeji, Kyoto, and Nara. Since this trip took place almost 2 months ago, I will do my best to include the details of our trip. Here we go...

July 1st, Wednesday afternoon, Raymond and I picked up our rental car and headed out of town, but we got lost, and ended up very hungry at a near by shopping center an hour later and decided we'll have dinner first. Now that our stomach is full, we headed up north on the express way.

Himeji is located in the Hyogo Prefecture, south of Kyoto, and it's one prized treasure is it's Himeji Castle. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the best example of a true Japanese Castle. In fact, after seeing this castle, pretty much all other castles seemed less impressive. The castle was built in 1346, but was badly damaged in the 1600s, so it was restored and expanded to the current seven story castle. It is so awesome that when Tom Cruise shot The Last Samurai, it took place here.

Our first full day, we decided to first tackle the castle. The grounds of the castle was like a maze, and as you wind through the maze up hill, you'd eventually reach the castle. From the top story of the castle, you could see the rest of the city of Himeji, surrounded by mountains and ocean. This was a definitely a place to build your castle to defend your ground from invaders. Before entering the castle, you are required to remove your shoes. Then an old lady hands you a plastic bag to hold your shoes while you're inside. At the end, you return the plastic bag to another old lady, where she then folds the used bags very neatly into a flat new looking plastic bags to be reused. Wow, I wonder how much they pay for that job.

With our Himeji castle tickets, we acquired a combo ticket for the near by Kokoen Garden. The garden was absolutely lovely and huge, and has nine individually themed gardens. We arrived early morning, so there were barely anyone there, except for about 30 employees working diligently on spurning the trees. The place was tranquil and peaceful, we strolled around the garden through many water falls with giant asian gold fishes.

Continuing our journey, we headed north to Kyoto, the old capital of Japan prior to WWII. We selected a small Japanese style inn as our home base for the next 3 nights. This was the first time I've ever set foot in a Japanese styled hotel, and boy it is small. If I thought Japanese hotel rooms were small, this was even smaller. The room was sparsely furnished. A small table for tea, a water heater, tea bags, 2 cups, and mats for sleeping. That pretty much concluded all the things that were in the room.

We didn't dwell and continued our sightseeing. Our first stop was Fushimi Inari Shrine. Inari is a fox like creature and is represented in shrines as a god. It is also the god of business, so many Japanese company donate money to this shrine. For example each of the torii below is donated by a particular Japanese firm, with the name of the company written on the side of the torii.

The next day, we decided to visit a few of the famous temples and shrines. First stop Ninnaji, originally built in 886, but was destroyed in 1450s and rebuilt and expanded (sound familiar?) 150 years later. This temple was also the home to a line of imperial lineage, when an emperor retires, he often became a priest/monk, and here would be his home. This tradition carried on from 900 to almost 1900.

Two of the prized possessions of this temple is it's original hand painted screen walls and a beautiful zen garden. Here is where we decided to relax bit, enjoy some of Japanese mocha (whipped powder green tea) and the view of this peaceful zen garden (reminds me of the last fight between Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in Kill Bill Vol One).

Next stop Ryoanji, meaning the Temple of Peaceful Dragon or Peaceful Dragon Temple as the literal translation. All of the names of the temple are written in Kanji or Chinese characters because Chinese language came to Japan along with Buddhism. A lot of the Chinese characters remained in their language, but Japanese also have their own set of alphabets.

The temple was under construction when we visit, so a lot of the sites were closed off to tourists. However, its most impressive and famous site was not, and that was it's dry zen garden. A dry garden is basically a garden made of small pebbles/rocks, and this one was no different. The small pebbles are raked precisely in a particular direction or another to indicate the flow of water or qi (air). Maybe I lack inner peace to fully appreciate this beautiful garden, but it was kind of a disappointment. AKA, I don't get it.

Of course, we saved our best sight for last -- Kinkakuji or more famously known as Golden Pavilion Temple. I was very excited to see this temple because this was the place where Ikkyusan studied as an adult zen master. Ikkyusan is a Japanese animation series that aired in China when I was little, and I watched it religiously everyday. So it was pretty cool to see this temple in real life. Plus, it's just a beautiful temple, and it doesn't hurt that the top two layers of this temple is built using pure gold leaves.

Lunch, finally!!! We decided that we'd go all out and have a nice sit down lunch at somewhere fancy near the Imperial palace, but we ended up lost and walking in the opposite direction before finally finding the place suggested by our guidebook. When we arrived at Mankamero, they were about to shut down for lunch, but thankfully, we made it just in time for them to seat us at a nice, private room, facing their peaceful and lush garden.

The hostess and waitress were all dressed in traditional kimonos, while they waited on us. Instantly , I felt we were underdressed for this place. There was no menu and no words were spoken, they began by serving us some tea and a fresh cold towel. Then the lady exited the room without ever turning her back on us, and then returned with some cold and fresh sashimi, jelly, and some rice. When she returned, once again no words were exchanged, except her absolute courteous gestures, she took out our emptied tray and immediately brought in more food. A straw basket with many different types of sushi and sashimi beautifully presented with a few maple leaves, a separate bowl of rice with a dash of sesame, and a bowl of miso soup. Once again she exited quietly without turning her back towards us.

As soon as she left, Raymond and I chowed down the food. The texture of the sushi was wonderful, along with a few other things I can't name. The rice was flavored with sushi vinegar, and the miso soup had pieces of decorative "mystery stuff" in it. Everything tasted and looked so pleasing. I couldn't help but take pictures of EVERYTHING.

The waitress came back in once more, refilling our sake and water, took out our emptied trays, and then brought back dessert this time. A quarter of grapefruit, but instead of actual grapefruit inside, it was grapefruit jello with a piece of cherry on top. It was just beautifully presented and what a novel idea! Made me want to do that when I get home. After we finished all of our food, we sat there and slowly enjoyed our tea and our view of the garden. It was so peaceful that I could have possible fallen asleep right there on the tatami mats. We signaled to have our bill brought to us, and it was a whopping ¥12000, but it was worth every yenny.

Day 3, our agenda was to visit the near by city of Nara. It was once a rival with Kyoto as the imperial capital, but after year 800, it fell out of favor. The city is modeled after the capital of China, Xi'an (terra-cotta warriors) during the Tang Dynasty. Today, the city has also fallen out of favor as a tourist destination, but the city is currently promoting and many sites and parking are free - which is unheard of in Japan. Our first destination is Todaiji.

Todaiji features a gigantic statue of buddha in its main hall. And when I say gigantic, I mean just the face of the buddha is 17.5 feet tall -- so it's gigantic. The rest of the temple ground features lots of intricately carved water fountains, where people can wash up (usually their hands) and cleanse their mouth by drink and spitting out the water from the fountain, and bronze lanterns hung low on the outside of the buildings. There's also a temple at the top of the hill over looking the entire temple grounds. A nice place to take a rest and feel the breeze of the air.

We took our time getting up on the last day of our vacation. Our agenda is to drive to Kobe to get some authentic French food for lunch before driving home leisurely back to Iwakuni. Kobe is a big city where there's a lot of foreigners, foreign architecture, and home to the insanely expensive kobe beef. We arrived in Kobe on a Sunday morning, and the place we had picked out for lunch was fully booked because Kobe is apparently a huge wedding destination for the rich Japanese. So every expensive foreign restaurant was catering a wedding or two. We thought we were out of luck, when we finally found one nice, quietly tucked away French restaurant that had an expensive wine list and good French-Japanese food. Bingo! And with that we concluded our first vacation in Japan.

Arrival

We arrived in Japan on May 29, 2009 in the mid afternoon. One of Raymond's new co-worker picked us up at the airport and brought us to our hotel -- our unofficial home for the next 2 weeks. Prior to arrival, Raymond and I had already purchased a car in Iwakuni from a guy who was leaving his post here. So within a few days, we had our own set of wheels and were exploring the town and cities near by.

Our Honda. They don't have this model in US, but it's very popular in Japan

Note: The steering wheel is on the otherside, and I still have trouble getting on the "correct" passenger side.

On June 15, we moved into our new place. A three bedroom apartment on base, next to the commissary (AKA grocery store) and very centrally located. By June 17, all of our stuff had arrived and we are all set to set out our next 3 years in this country.

Our living room and dinning room. It's bigger than it looks, but hard to take photo of it from the inside.

Our big kitchen. An upgrade from our tiny kitchen in Charlotte. Very cool!

Our bedroom/closet. Well, the closet space is quite small, but luckily we have 3 bedrooms, so who's going to say anything for me to spill over a bit to another room. Which is what I did.

Cross country USA Part 3: The Grand Finale

After traveling with Raymond, now, for the past 15 days where we were basically joint at the hip, I was dying for some OTHER company. Today, May 24th... well, actually, tonight I will meet up with my bestfriend, Rebecca, for the Grand Canyon - Grand Finale part of the trip. For the morning, we drove to Mesa Verde, CO to visit US' largest Native American cliff dweller settlement (the Ancient Puebloan Indians).

The settlement has thought to date back to 1100 A.D., and was first explored by the Spanish in the 18th century. They named it Mesa Verde, meaning "green tableland" for the tree covered plateaus, and it was absolutely green as ever in May; however, it pretty much turns into a dessert brown once the summer hits. The stone dwellings were actually discovered by archeologists in the late 19th century, when the cave excavations began and they found hundreds of rooms over many sites in the area. The largest is the Cliff Palace with over 150 rooms, some were underground with only a small opening to the cliff. Then in the 1300 A.D., the dwellers suddenly departed the area, and to this day this phenomena has yet to be explained.

We continued west to Four Corners, where they were charging admission to visit an American flag planted in the corner of four states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona). I decided against paying the fee, and we continued driving. We reached Monument Valley, AZ by late afternoon, and the landscape of this place is odd. The land is flat and dry as can be, where you can see miles down the road except for these odd structures that stick out from middle of nowhere. The descriptions of these structures would be totem pole, elephant buttes, mittens, etc.

By sunset, we have met up with Rebecca and arrived at the edge of Grand Canyon. We quickly got out of the car for a quick picture. And I think this first picture I captured of Grand Canyon was perhaps my best picture of Grand Canyon.

May 25th, 2009. We woke up extra early to participate in the Mule Ride into Grand Canyon on the Bright Angel trail. The trail brings us about 4000 feet down and 6 miles into the canyon, and luckily for us -- on mule back. It took us all the way to Bright Angel point where it over looks the Colorado River, and along the way we passed the Indian Garden, which is a field full of cactus flower.

The ride takes about 3 hours down into the canyon, which is quite hard sitting on the mule going down at about 18% down grade, then 4 hours back up the canyon in scorching heat. I can't lie, there was no way I could have hiked this myself, so I will not complain about how uncomfortable the ride was on the mule. At the Bright Angle Point, I was lucky enough to see an American condor (which is an endangered species) and a gecko.

I was a bit sad that we were unable to spend more time exploring the Grand Canyon, but I was absolutely exhausted from the mule ride the day before. The three of us happily settled for breakfast at Denny's and off back home for Rebecca in Las Vegas. Along the way we stopped briefly at Hoover Dam, and I was amazed at how touristy it was there -- for a dam! And once we were home at Rebecca's, I was delighted to be able to sleep on her sofa instead of a hotel bed for once, again.

After dinner, Rebecca took Raymond and I to the famous Vegas strip. Where there were small replicates of... everything. From Eiffel tower to Giza pyramids to the Wings in the Louvre to fake venetian canals... indoor! There was a million screens flashing a bit of everything at you, just a constant visual feast. After about an hour, Raymond was officially tired and whined about going home. So we finally caught an entire showing of the Bellagio fountain show and off we're home.

The next day, I was feeling a little gloom. It was my last official day in USA. I packed and repacked my belongings, and was finally ready to make a departure from this country. Rebecca dropped us off at the Las Vegas airport, where we said our good byes in tears, and then we were off. The past 3 weeks went in a whirlwind, and it was both sweet and bitter. From my last view of Charlotte, to saying "I DO" at the wedding, to my last hug with my mom, to over indulged food fest at Blackberry Farm, to leaving the east coast through the gateway of the west, to stepping on a stupid cactus, to my first buffalo burger, to grand sights of snow capped Rockies, to the colorful Grand Canyon, to the outrageous city of Las Vegas, and to my final good byes with my bestfriend and my adopted home country, USA.