Ooops! I forgot to post in the blog last month. Well, probably not that much of a concern for you all, as last month was pretty cold, and I had an infection (doctors still have not managed to explain how I got it, but it's gone now, thanks to the marvel of anti-biotics), so we didn't get out much. But there is enough to report to make this more interesting than many people's lives, I'm sure. It's all relative. It's all relatively relative, anyway.
So, last post we were just about to go away to Kanazawa for our holiday.
Kanazawa is in Ishikawa Prefecture in the Hokrikyu region of Japan. It is famous for it's pleasant Japan Sea influenced summers, and harsh Siberian blizard influenced winters. We were hoping to see some snow, preferably in Kenroku-en, a famous Japanese garden, rated as one of the top three gardens in Japan.
We left on the 28th in a hire car. It was very nice. I enjoyed the drive. Made one wrong turn and almost ended up in Nagoya for a moment there. But I managed to find an exit and turn around, and all was well. We stopped in Hikone on the way to check out Hikone castle. The sun was being all shiny, and the photos look rather pretty, I think. Hikone castle is the last of the 4 National treasure castles I was hoping to see, so that's that. I have collected the set.
After hitting the highway again, the weather turned cold and rainy, and occasionally snowy as we wound our way through Fukui Prefecture. Fukui was cold and snowy, there were lots of tunnels that went for about 2km through mountains as we got closer to the Japan Sea coast. Just amazing scenery. I found it really exciting just to be there.
We arrived in Kanazawa, checked into our hotel, and I almost instantaneously started getting cold symptoms! Eee, gads, bad timing! I shuffled off to the chemist and got some cold and flu tablets and struggled on, almost uneffected. On the 29th we went to Kenroku-en. Unfortunately for us, there was no snow. Our students had been admonishing us for the entire month of December: "Kanazawa is very cold, be sure to wear lots of warm clothes." We get to Kanazawa and the top temperature in Kanazawa that day was higher than the temperature in Osaka! Talk about don't believe the hype!
Anyway, the garden itself is very pretty, and I'm sure it would be even prettier had it been snowy. But alas, it was not to be.
Whilst we were in Kanazawa I bought myself an umbrella for a souvenir. There is a local saying in Kanazawa that states: "Bento o wasurete mo, kasa o wasureru na!" (forget your lunch, but don't forget your umbrella). This is due to the mad weather that Kanazawa often experiences. On our last day in Ishikawa prefecture, the weather turned bad, windy, rainy, snowy, simultaneously, fantastically bad... just what I had been hoping for! But alas, it did so only in time to make my drive home a bit more perilous. We passed about 4 or 5 car accidents on our way, but being the Grandma slow-coach that I am, I didn't manage to be in any of those accidents.
So, in early January, that's when I started getting these mysterious abdominal pains. After 3 weeks, I decided that they were of sufficient quality to warrant a trip to the doctor, who took some blood from me and found some kind of bacteria having a party in my abdomen. Currently got the bacteria whacking stick out to give those unwelcome visitors a good seeing to, and will be back to normal by the end of the week. Don't know what those nasty bacterias were up to, but I'm going to have a full medical when I get back to Australia to see how it is that I managed to get sick like that. Anyway, nothing to concern you all, it's just why we haven't done anything much.
However, after three or so weekends of being indoors, I went a bit stir crazy and this weekend I demanded that we go somewhere to get some sightseeing in. So we went off to Uji city in Southern Kyoto Prefecture to get some sights in. The main attraction there is Byōdō-in. This temple is co-owned by the Jodo-shinshu (Pure Land) Buddhist sect and the Tendai sect. The image of The Pheonix Hall at Byōdō-in is featured on the back of the ¥10 coin. The hall houses an Amida-Buddha statue made from cedar and lacquered in gold of quite exceptional beauty. The roof is carved in a most spectacular style, and there are paintings on the walls of Amida-Buddha and his gang of Bodhisattvas cruising around on clouds, being awesome and stuff. Because Byōdō-in is so old (it was built in the 11th century), the original paintings now just look like some brown stains on the walls, but there are some replicas in the fantastic, modern, architect designed museum next door that give you an idea of what it must have looked like when it was new. The Jodo-shiki (perfection) garden is also extremely beautiful, but my photos look quite poor in comparison to how it looked in real life.
Last but not least, I trialed Picasa as a photo uploader for this post, and I think the official verdict is: it sucks. It's compressed my photos so hard, they look like faded prints. I swear, the exposure rate on my camera is set to auto, it shouldn't look that underexposed! So, the next post will be back on the cursed facebook. Facebook sucks, but at least it doesn't render my photos like muck!
Alright, off to work now. We're continuing to try and scrape all our belongings and whatnot together to send home, and get our travel plans in order. We've decided to abandon the original plan to do Kyuushu and Okinawa - it was just too expensive and the cost was stressing me out. So now we're going to just hang out in Osaka, do some hanami time in Kyoto, and make a quick trip back to Tokyo, the city I always wanted to call home in Japan, for one last Sayonara party.
In February we're seeing some bands, playing some shows, and in early March we're going to Hiroshima with Dave and Kerry (who're making it back for a second visit!) so there will be photos to show and stories to tell. Don't hesitate to let us know you exist. We get lonely over here sometimes...
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