Hirakata Sun Plaza Hotel

... The bus ride back from the temples was quite the experinece. The bus was packed. It was very hard to get off the bus at our stop. You have to get off the bus at the front of the bus which meant we had to push our way thorugh everyone. You actually get on the bus at the back door and you get off at the front. You pay your fair when you get off.

We ended the morning at a large ...

... The statues are made with Japanese cypress. The temple hall is constructed in 1266 is about 120 metres long.

- Daigoji Sanboin - built in 1115, its garden is designated as a special historic spot and place of scenic beauty (the garden is beautiful).

All the temples and garden had beautiful trees and ponds. The trees had leaves of many vivid colours. The red and yellow leaved trees were incredible.

Kyoto, Kinki, Japan agi-al

We arrived in Osaka at 7am after two 7 hour flights and a 3 hour stopover in KL... what is sleep again?
The excitement of being in Japan kept us going all day though, and we managed to fit in a visit to Osaka castle, surrounded by deciduous trees in all beautiful shades of yellow and red (even Bevan thought it was pretty). We also visited Amerika Mura, the square to sit in and ...

Hello everyone! I figured it was time to update my travel blog again. I recently bought a cell phone. It's really pretty cool. I got the most basic of plans and the most basic of the phones, but it still comes with a bilingual option (which is rather essential), a navigation dot - this particular application stayed in Japanese so I have no idea how to use it -, An FM radio - which is really neat, but I keep forgetting my headphones that work ...

Haha. So I'm done being lazy. This weekend I didn't do to much. I caught a cold so I had a little adventure to my local - and by local I mean an hour busy ride over to territory that I know - kusuriya, or drug store. I spent about 20 minutes looking at all the cold medicine before choosing one of the children's medicines that had all the pictures of the sneezing and coughing anpan-man. I got peach flavored ...

So my move in with my host family seems to have gone smoothly. They are friendly and it appears there was just a slight mistake with their application. The information I received said that they had one or more family members that smoked but no family members that drank. This appears to be wrong. There is an ashtray on the family room table, but it's holding shells and coins, I don't think it's ever been used for a cigarette ...

... t really come in handy when your town is under attack by an army of angry Samurai wielding flaming torches. Which is why almost everything is a reconstruction. Unfortunately, Todaiji was partially burned down during the first few years after it was made. Yet it still stands to this day and is gigantic. Whats scarier is that what stands now, is still just one third of the original.

Inside Todaiji Temple is the most breathtaking thing I have ever seen. It contains Japan's ...

Time moved faster as the days grew warmer and all too suddenly the semester was at an end. Graduation came on May 19th, a day that dawned cloudy. Weighing in a full 15 kilograms lighter then when I arrived, I was able to fit into formal wear purchased entirely in Japan. It was snazzy, but a downpour on the way to school left me drenched throughout the ceremony which included School president Tanimoto and the US consular general to Japan as speakers. The speeches had a ...

I woke up to a surprise on my second morning in Japan- snow! I thought that I had left the white stuff behind, but it came down for several hours, making for a beautiful first walk to campus. To get to school, we take a narrow residential road which runs past some handsome old Japanese houses, two parks and a small Shinto shrine. This road would be considered an alley in the US, or at least one way, but here it is a full, two lane road. Japanese tear back and forth on bicycles and ...

... trees providing a smooth carpet to walk on up to the zen gardens. These are meticulously well-kempt with not a leaf nor blade of grass out of place. I loved the mounds of grey sand raked into sweeping swirls of immense precision. All very strange. The Golden Temple was the highlight of our day in Kyoto. Why anyone would coat their home in gold-leaf is beyond me but it makes for a striking effect reflected in the surrounding lake.