Keisen Tamba

... minutes in some chilly weather to our warm, but fairly dirty and crowded guesthouse. Luckily (?) the bath house stayed open until midnight. Nervous, Cameron and I set out through some dark streets to find the baths. Cameron had tried to give me some idea of what I was about to experience, but obviously it was a bit hard since he'd only been in the male area. We paid our 100 Yen each and were given plastic buckets. "Hmm, I thought..." Well, I don't fit ...

... looking for a cab ("just focus on the Bamboo forest"). Then we went to an Orange shrine/temple apart from Daitoki and grabbed a cab to some of the temples on the Philosopher's walk, we ate the most amazing brown tea ice cream cone. Ohojo and Kohojo for a walk through a garden which we 'had to pay for'. climbing the stairs to see the view of Kyoto, beautiful ponds, streams, waterfalls. The bird posing for photos. We saw some ...

... from any of the teahouses we passed. After stopping just before sunset in Kenji-jo, the first Zen Buddhist temple in Japan, we wandered around in Gion for a while, which was wonderful because of all the ancient and traditional buildings there; the area has maintained the look and feel of a pre-modern/pre-industrial Japan with the wonderful wooden exteriors and intimate walkways and lanterns. As it got darker and ...

I finally got photos to load!! I am back tracking and editing my blogs with correct dates so you know when certain pictures were taken. I'll follow up the picture albums with a blog about what happened in that port. I'm going to take advantage of this internet connection, and worry about uploading the stories later. I love and miss you all!! I'll be back in California on December 7th! Kim

... City. The architecture here is much different than the previous cities we had visited. Everything is more quaint. Much of the city is built from wood. About 1,350 years ago, the Shoguns decided that the villagers would have to pay taxes. Because Hida was in the mountains and there was no rice, grains, or textiles they could use to pay this tax, it was decided instead, that the villagers would send their young boys and men to the capital to work for 250 to 300 days of the ...

... like that. Hasn't she been through enough? I commented that it was brave of her to come forward and share such upsetting, personal memories with other people, especially Westerners. Keiko replied that many of the hibakusha don't talk to their children about the atomic bomb. There is an unspoken fear that many of the hibakusha share - have they been affected by the radiation somehow? In Japan, people from other cities are warned by their ...

... around most of the immediate city. I spent a time just exploring the little mom and pops that lined the streets of Komeoka. After almost getting lost, I found my way on the same road as the library and the ramen shop. Oddly enough I ran into Caitlin, Betty, and Aaron who were on their way to the ramen shop. I wasn't terribly hungry, but when the idea of food gets implanted into my mind I usually collapse. Needless to say, I ended up eating yaki ...

... the day and it seems a popular thing for Japanese girls to do. After a day loooking at temples I had had enough and the next day I just spent in the new city browsing through the markets and shops. As well as being a very old city, Kyoto is also a very modern Japanese city with all the strange people that come with a modern Japanese city. Sometimes it`s fun to just walk around the city watching these people.

... maps started to be in Japanese only and I started to feel lost. Of course then no one was around to help me. ^^ Nevertheless I found to my destination when I saw the Kyotos Women's University which is located directly west of the Mausoleum. I basically just ended up one block to the south of where I wanted to go. So then I was on the long way up to the grave of Hideyoshi Toyotomi which lies on ...

... be something special, jumped on the bus and off we went. What we saw in Kyoto was all beautiful and well worth the wait! The major sights in Kyoto are really spread out so it involved a lot of busing and walking around. The first day we saw the Kinkaku-ji (Golden temple), Ryoan-ji, Ginkaku-ji (Silver temple)and the Nanzen-in. The Golden temple is probably one of the most photographed temples in Japan, covered in gold foil with a beautiful reflection in ...