Top Ten Trip Pictures (plus a deer)

Hi everyone,
Well Esther and I got back from our trip to the Osaka region last week and since then I’ve been going through our pictures (we have over a thousand of them) and sorting them by region. Looking through them, there are definitely a few that stand out so I thought I would put up my top ten. Some of them are of the major sights including the famous rock garden and temples in Kyoto and the Himeji castle but some of them just stand on their own.

This first one is from a game center in Himeji. The truth is, I’m hopelessly and utterly addicted to these medal games here. They are a bit like pachinko where you exchange you money for tokens, but these game are a combination of slots and the normal medal game where you try and push coins off the counter. And you can’t exchange your medals back to cash, not that you actually ever win… So anyways I convinced Esther that I would be a good cultural experience to play and so she unwittingly feed my habit.

This next picture is the famous rock garden in Kyoto. Supposedly when sitting on the floor you are unable to see all 12 rocks at the same time. From my observations, that seems to be correct. It was very cool to see but also very crowed which took away from the atmosphere.

Next up is a picture of Esther during our side trip to Mt. Koya. When I originally planed our tip, I looked at a whole bunch of pictures of temples and graves powered with snow and we actually were lucky (or unlucky) enough to arrive during a snow storm. Lucky because it was really pretty, as in straight out of a post card. But unlucky because we frozzeee

This is a pan picture that Esther took with her new camera. You take three pictures and the camera stitches them together. I think it actually does a really good job. This picture is from an obscure temple that we visited on our fistr day in Kyoto however it was definitely a highlight. If you look at the picture closely, you can see a branch from the big tree in the center that is supported by a couple of wooden braces of the gravel.

Next is a little tiny statue that I found in the corner of a temple garden. Don’t touch his cash, hes trying to put his kids through college.

The pan picture is of harbor land or something in kobe. We stopped off in kobe while traveling to Osaka to get a little taste of the city. We ended up having a really good time in their china town where we bough food from street vendors and watched up fish get wacked. Afterwards we checked out the water front where Esther took this picture. The red tower to the right is the Osaka tower or something and the Farris wheel on the left is in some kiddy water front theme park which we checked out later in the day. Kobe was a very interesting town and in the future I would like to come back and explore some more.

I really like this picture. So during our expedition to Mt. koya, which was a huge hassle but offered some great views, I bought some niku-don at a little shop on the train platform. Along with the little meat filled buns I also received two kites. I don’t exactly know where the kites entered the transaction; perhaps I bought the “happy kite meat bun special” but….. don’t know. Anyways, I decided to fly it on the train plat from during one of our transfers and Esther managed to take this excellent picture.

BTW sarah – notice the hat? I love it, I wore it constantly. The hat/scarf combo was going strong for the first few days until I lost the scarf somewhere! Sorry! Esther can attest to how upset I was. Anyways, maybe I can persuade you to knit me a new one in the future. I won’t lose that one.

Another cool picture from mt. Koya. I don’t think ive mentioned it yet, but we visited on new years day which is THE day for going to temples. Anyways we got to these particular ones late in the day after the crowds thinned out which was nice. The big red one on the right was my favorite sight from the entire trip. I’m over on the left, on the left side of the middle temple to give you some scale. The thing was absolutely huge.

Alright this ones big. This is kinkakuji, probably the most famous temple in Kyoto and up there in all of Japan. Esther snapped this amazing picture. The walls of the temple are wood, but all of the gold… color is actually gold foil that is applied in neat little squares. The detail work on this thing is intense.

Alright, this is my favorite picture of the Himeji castle. Between Esther and I, we probably to about 40 pictures of it so that’s saying something. This one was taken from inside the castle complex when the sun briefly poked its head out from behind the clouds.

Last up is a deer. And you may think you have seen deer before, but not like these things. They are like rats that have invaded the city and everyone has decided that they don’t mind so much. So everywhere you go, you see these dehorned scavengers following people trying to steal the deer crackers out of their pockets. I have a picture of the big nara Buddha which is where we were going when I took this picture but none of them really came out.