Japan: Mountains

While in Osaka, we visited Mount Tenpo. At 4.5m above sea level, it makes the somewhat dubious claim to be Japan's lowest mountain.

 The Mount Tenpo park was full of blooming cherry trees--some of the nicest we saw while in Japan.
 

Mount Fuji was a more impressive sight. The surrounding landscape would have been beautiful even without Fuji-San: lakes, hillsides covered with yellow grasses, several mountains in the distance. And then on top of that already amazing landscape was the tallest mountain of all, seemingly rising up out of the clouds themselves.

One of our favorite activities in Japan was hiking up to the top of this smaller mountain near Mount Fuji. (We got a boost by starting the hike from an observation site that was already well up the side of the mountain.) The hike was fun in and of itself, and on the way down we were walking into the view of Fuji-San.

Japan: More crazy signs

Our last blog post featured this area lit up at night. The over-the-top advertising was also fun to see during the day.

Osaka is known for its tako yaki, an octopus dumpling. Our family had mixed reviews on the dish. Juniper liked it; Hazel didn't; and both of the grown-ups could take it or leave it. This little tako yaki stand was doing all it could to capitalize on the popularity of the local dish.
 

In addition to the giant animatronic octopus with moving tentacles, they had a loudspeaker blaring a dance remake of the Hallelujah Choir from Handel's Messiah, but instead of "Hallelujah, hallelujah" it was "Tako yaki, tako yaki." It was cheesy and silly and delightfully full of cheerful happy energy. All at 10:30 in the morning.
 

 The giant sushi hand and the blowfish were also pretty fun.

Japan: Osaka lights

From historic Kyoto to modern Osaka.

Our hotel's biggest selling point was being a block away from all this. Kevin described this popular tourist district as Times Square meets Bourbon Street. (But cleaner.)

Spammy and Salamander!
 

Super Million Hair!

Many thanks to Chikako for being willing to stay back at the hotel with all four sleeping children!

Japan: Tired kids

The past few blog posts have been from one busy day in Kyoto. It was a lot of fun, but very tiring for the children. This is Hazel before we went to the Golden Pavilion.

And this is Nina, after visiting the Golden Pavilion.

It was one of those days where everything takes a little longer than you think it will, and then there was some sort of bizarre bus delay, and then it was nearly our kids' bedtime and we still needed to take a train to Osaka. We considered bailing on the Osaka leg of our trip and just going back to Gifu, but the expensive hotel was pre-paid and non-refundable. By the time we got to our hotel, Nina and Sam had gotten a second wind and were excited to be there; Juniper and Hazel were on the verge of a complete meltdown. They were exhausted, but too hungry to go straight to bed. We decided to eat in the hotel restaurant. Aaron and the Sugiyama-Allens went to the restaurant to order, while I went to the room to get the girls ready for bed (with the goal of going straight to bed as soon as they were done eating).

I walked into the hip, swanky hotel restaurant in my travel-dusty and casual clothes, with two kids in their PJs. And these were not subtle PJs--dinosaurs and rocket ships. While in Japan, we mostly stood out for being a crowd with lots of white people. In this particular setting, I think our general family schlubbiness may have been even more remarkable than our whiteness. Every other patron of the restaurant was a very stylish, twentysomething Japanese woman. And what were they eating? Pancakes. Who knew that pancakes are currently a hip and stylish fad in Japan. We fed our children wildly overpriced pancakes; no one had a meltdown; and they all got a very good night's sleep.

Japan: Kimonos and Cherry Blossoms

While in Kyoto, the kids played the kimono game. The first iteration of the game involved awarding a point to the first child to spot a kimono. It pretty quickly devolved into an unpleasant mess of arguments about who spotted which kimono first and whether or not the purple kimono child A just spotted was the same one as the purple kimono for which child B had already received a point. The kimono game take 2 was much more successful. In this game, the group collaborated to count as many kimonos as possible. By the end of our day in Kyoto, they had surpassed 200. That's probably about 190 more people in kimonos than we saw on the rest of our trip combined. Outside of Kyoto, we saw only a handful of people actually wearing kimonos.

We were also on the constant lookout for cherry blossoms--along with every other tourist in Kyoto. This was a side street off the main tourist drag down the mountain from the Kiyomizu-dera temple. Most of the side streets looked like what you would expect in a tourist area: people, certainly, but not crowds. This side street, however, had a cherry tree in full blossom.

Before visiting Japan, we knew that Japanese cherry blossoms were a big deal, but we didn't quite realize just what a Big Deal they actually are in Japan. The TV news had cherry blossom coverage, with maps that looked like weather maps tracking the progress of blooming from south to north. We saw reporters on the scene, covering impressive or early blooms. At one point, Kevin excitedly commented that the news was showing a blooming tree in the next town over, which meant that they would probably be blooming in Gifu soon. The spot included man-on-the street interviews with people excitedly observing a single blooming cherry tree, the first in their town.

Japan: Golden Pavilion

The Golden Pavilion is a Zen Buddhist temple, and popular tourist destination. In case you can't tell in this small photo, the golden refers to actual gold, not just gold color. It was remarkably lovely, and we had the good fortune to arrive as the sun was just beginning to set and make the world glow.

The original temple was built in the 14th century, though the building was destroyed several times. The current pavilion building was constructed in the 1950s.


Perhaps the most shocking thing about this picture is the plastic bottle lying on the ground. We saw almost no litter in Japan...

...and certainly not in a place so well tended that someone sweeps the moss.

Prayer candles

Our girls were horrified by the smoke and smell of the incense. No amount of supposed good luck to come was going to get them to stand by while we wafted the smoke over them.

This photo was hard to come by. The girls are not so interested in smiling for the camera. We negotiated a smiling picture...

 ...with the promise of silly pictures to follow.

This one was an all natural, genuine smile.

Old statues--you can see that the faces are worn away.

And on our way out, ice cream sandwiches!

What a good dad.

Japan: Kiyomizu-dera

Kiyomizu-dera is a Buddhist temple in Kyoto. It was established in 778, though the original temple no longer survives. Most of the current buildings were constructed almost 1,000 years later, in the 1600s.  Here we are approaching the entrance.

The temple is built on the side of a mountain, so there were lots of steps to climb.

This already looks impressive, but it is not yet the main attraction. There were several gates and pagodas leading up to the main hall.

This is the view of one of the gates from above, with Kyoto in the background.

We rinsed our hands with these dippers to purify them before entering the temple. Supposedly, it's good luck to pour water on this statue, so all the kids took a turn.

The forecast called for peak cherry blossoms while we were in Kyoto, but a cold spell delayed the trees. Shortly after we left, this mountainside was probably covered with cherry blossoms.

The temple's main hall...

...and a quieter, more contemplative spot.

This natural spring here has been providing water continuously since the temple was founded.

You can wait in line for the opportunity to use one of these long-handled dippers to drink the holy water.

We almost skipped the line, but I'm glad we didn't. The water was surprisingly delicious, and it was interesting to experience something that people have been doing at this site for over 1,200 years.

Look--cherry blossoms! And general all-around loveliness.