So, my battery started not being able to make it through the day (presumably, even Apple's controversial CPU slowdown was not enough to save the day) without a boost so I decided that was a sign I needed to go ahead and answer the siren call to upgrade to the iPhone X. Here are some recent shots. The night and fiery sunrise shots were both from our roof.
What do you think?
One of Japan's most endearing qualities—beyond the people themselves—is its celebration of cuteness in general.
This shot is Dana conducting a 'size check' of her feet against those embedded in the subway platform floor showing where one should stand while waiting for passengers to disembark the subway car prior to boarding. There's something comforting about being 'right size' when you're so used to being 'under tall' in your home country.
This bouquet of flowers was given to us upon arrival in Tokyo by our friends Hiromi-san and Naoto-san. They brightened our Airbnb room during our week there.
While cherry blossom stalking in the Kyoto Imperial Palace, we happened upon this gentleman setting up this 'photo op' with his three cute four-legged friends. No 'tip-jar' was in evidence. Just for fun, he had his dogs decked out for show and happily engaged those compelled—like us—to capture this cuteness injection.
On our way walking to the monthly antique market at To-ji Temple in Kyoto (recommended, BTW), while waiting for the light to change, a bicycle showed up carrying a backpack full of cuteness. Dana managed to snag this shot before it headed down the lane ahead of us.
For us, Japan in general is a feast for the eyes. Few things bring that out as much as the art of merchandising food and other retail offerings. While this time of year holds fame for cherry blossoms, it's also known for peak strawberry season. Nothing celebrates that fact more than the plethora of strawberry manju offerings in stores and street-side stands. Some of these displays captured our attention more than others and so we share here a few of those that stuck out to us. We hope you'll enjoy.
We more or less ate our way through Tokyo and Kyoto.
The high point in Tokyo was a traditional kaiseki meal in Kichijoji (west of Shinjuku) organized by and shared with our friends Naoto and Hiromi Katsube. Here are a sampling of the dishes served:
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Dana's friend Noreen Fukumori, an American who previously lived 10 years in Tokyo strongly recommended a tempura restaurant to us in the Omotesando neighborhood of Tokyo. We discovered that the chef has been operating this restaurant for 48 years. He invited us to sit right in front of him for the best show.
In Kyoto, we took in a 1/2-day cooking class featuring Kobe beef taught by a fascinating young man, Taro-san, possessed of passion and deep knowledge of food and food history. It was an amazingly enlightening, tasty hands-on experience held in his home.
We really ate a lot. And this is pretty trite, but some of the other highlights:
Interestingly, on this 50-something-eth visit to Japan, I finally noticed that Tokyo and Kyoto are anagrams of each other. Who knew? Better late than never, I suppose.
While in Tokyo we shared time with our dear friends of almost three decades, Naoto and Hiromi Katsube. Here's a shot me and Naoto-san on the platform waiting to take the (ancient) Toden-Arakawa Streetcar Line. It's kind of like a toy train for grownups:
Unaware of our destination, they kindly took us to visit Paper Nao, the gallery and showroom of renown traditional paper maker Naoaki Sakamoto, who had been highly recommended to us by Dana's friend Noreen Fukumori
and checked out his work.
Kyoto reputedly includes over 400 shrines within its city limits. Temples and palaces are on top of that. A one-week visit hardly affords enough time to do justice as a tourist, but we gave it our best shot. Here are a sampling of the photos that resulted. In addition, our visit coincided with the annual Blue Dragon festival and parade at the Kiyomizu-dera Temple where we had a chance to exercise our video skillz. Please enjoy!
The Japanese school year starts in April and so the school break centers around late March and early April (coincidentally aligning with when cherry blossom season often occurs). So we found that our visits to some of the more famous gardens and highlights of nature around Tokyo and Kyoto were often accompanied by thousands of our close personal friends. And boy was it worth it. Check it out.
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Japan is of course much more than just cherry blossoms. As we acquainted ourselves with the ancient and rich history city of Kyoto, it captivated us with its many interesting and characteristic street scenes. Try as we might to not be that (photo-bug) tourist, we failed. But we were rewarded for our weakness—here are some of the shots we thought worth sharing.
We planned to visit Tokyo and Kyoto this spring to see the cherry blossoms (and associated festivities) to fulfill a "bucket list" item both Dana and I have long held. And as you might imagine, that's a fairly popular thing to want to do and so travel arrangements need to be made many months in advance. But it's tricky because the window is relatively narrow (sometimes just a week) and it varies from year to year depending on how mother nature's transition from winter to spring plays out. We looked at cherry blossom seasons from the past couple of years and took an average of the beginning, peak and end of the cherry blossom season and made our reservations six plus months ago. We booked a full two-week visit (a week each in Tokyo then Kyoto) in hopes the wider window would increase our odds of hitting the cherry blossom jackpot. As we approached spring, it looked like our guess was going to pay off. But the four weeks prior to our planned departure, Japan plunged unexpectedly back into winter weather and with each passing week, the forecasted cherry blossom peak moved steadily later. The drama was almost unbearable. Upon arrival in Tokyo, there was scarcely a blossom in sight. And was it cold! By the end of our planned week in Tokyo, we'd seen a few example blossoming trees, but nothing of the sort or scale for which Japan is legendary. And Kyoto was cold too—with even fewer blossoming trees than we saw in Tokyo. But day by day it warmed up and by our final day, there were some stellar examples upon which to feast our eyes and cameras. Here are some of the better shots. Hope you enjoy!
(The first three are from Tokyo and the rest from Kyoto)
