{"id":733,"date":"2010-05-31T17:46:09","date_gmt":"2010-05-31T08:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/?p=733"},"modified":"2010-05-31T17:46:09","modified_gmt":"2010-05-31T08:46:09","slug":"sprint-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/2010\/05\/31\/sprint-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Sprint Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weekends ago a friend of mine from LA came to visit me for the weekend. Yes, for the weekend. We were IMing one day and I asked him when he was coming to visit. At that time I thought my days here were numbered (now, I think I have gotten extended again but I have no paperwork to support that) and he was going to the East Coast for work in the Fall, so he hopped on line and bought a ticket. For a weekend. Cool, I say, always glad to hace visitors.<\/p>\n

So what do you do in a weekend in Nagoya? Go other places! Hey, if you only have from 8:00 pm on a Friday until Noon on a Monday, why should we just hang out in my apartment \/ cave in Nagoya. If you had two days what would you do? We went to Kyoto on Saturday and Tokyo on Sunday. The old, the new, and some expensive transportation costs.<\/p>\n

For Nagoya-ites, of course the first night I had to take him to Yamachan<\/a>. Nagoya tebaski, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get any more Nagoya than that other than maybe kishimen<\/a>. It was a hit.<\/p>\n

Saturday morning we hopped on the shinkasen and went to Kyoto<\/a>. I have several variations on the same itinerary. We checked out Kyoto Station, then visited Ryoanji, Kinkakuji, and Gingakuji (with a stop at Omen restaurant). Instead of Higashiyama and Kiyomizudera, with took the Gion option. That turned out to be very interesting. Back to the train station, Nagoya, dinner (my favorite ramen) and then crashing hard.<\/p>\n

Kyoto Station –<\/p>\n

\"Cavernous<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What makes a terrace happy?<\/p>\n

\"Everyone<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve described Kyoto many times before, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>, and here<\/a>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not going to describe it all again. I will say though that this is the first time I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever been here in the late Spring. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been here for sakura and fall colors, but never this time. I think Kyoto is beautiful in all seasons, except for maybe the dog days of summer. Well, even then it is probably beautiful but the heat is likely too oppressive to remotely enjoy it. I was carrying two cameras, so I decided to use my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153big\u00e2\u20ac\u009d camera and shoot only black and white. I used my soon-to-be-deceased point and shoot for color. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I thought anyway. The leaves were remarkable.<\/p>\n

Fresh leaves at Ryoanji<\/p>\n

\"Lush<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To get a little off topic, I have been shooting in RAW<\/a> with the option to save a JPG of the image as well. I shot RAW because it is the pure sensor output \u00e2\u20ac\u201c no processing by the camera. Well, when I loaded my images in to Aperture, I only saw color. I guess Aperture<\/a>, although it had both the RAW and JPG, only chose to display the RAW so everything was in color! I went searching for the black and white, found them, but it was harder to preview them. The cool thing is that there are a few pictures I shot that are more interesting in color so I never lost that data. But now editing and browsing in Aperture is a little difficult. I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fallen in love with Aperture and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what it actually gives me. Even the directory structure got all messed up.<\/p>\n

So, as I said, I shot in black and white mostly, and for this blog entry I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try to remain true to my assignment. However, I did shoot some in color and there might be a few that I will allow myself to start with the RAW image because, well, color was better.<\/p>\n

\"Ryoanji\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ryoanji\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ryoanji\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ryoanji<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Which way? The usual route, but please do not touch the trees.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Do<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As Aaron is just a child and a triathlete at that, I figured we could walk from Ryoanji<\/a> to Kinkakuji<\/a>. It was swarming with folks of course. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve saturated on Kinkakuji quite honestly but it is a must stop for first time visitors. It was school trip time, so the place was crawling with junior high students. We were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153interviewed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by some students and that was pretty funny. When they asked where I was from and I answered, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nagoya\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I think they were a little confused. Heh heh.<\/p>\n

A few pictures from Kinkakuji –<\/p>\n

\"Kinkakuji\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Kinkakuji\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And the swarming students at Kinkakuji (and Ginkakuji) –<\/p>\n

\"Kinkakuji\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ginkakuji\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We caught a taxi to Ginkakuji<\/a>, and stopped for udon at Omen. Stull yummy, the first restaurant I ever went to in Kyoto. Thanks Kevin. Ginkakuji was really nice this time. The renovation was complete and the grounds were beautiful. We did a little of the Philosopher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Walk as well.<\/p>\n

\"Ginkakuji\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ginkakuji\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ginkakuji<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The curtain of the udon shop.<\/p>\n

\"Omen<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d go to Gion next. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never really wandered around the Geisha district. When I was in Kyoto with my family, a taxi driver took us through that area. We decided to walk through andenjoyed the old school flavor. How much was old and how much was made to look old I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure. While we were walking around we say a Maiko<\/a> walking down the street. I felt a little guilty but I snapped a picture. There was a westerner basically just running in front, taking a load of pictures, running in front, taking pictures, and so on. I thought it was a little bit rude. We wandered around a little more and kept bumping into Maiko. We saw an old \u00e3\u0081\u2122\u00e3\u0081\u2018\u00e3\u0081\u00b9 Japanese guy chasing Maikos as well so I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel so bad.<\/p>\n

Street scenes in Gion,<\/p>\n

\"Gion\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Gion\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Gion\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Gion\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"It's<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A high school archery club, possibly post event,<\/p>\n

\"Archery<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And finally a Maiko,<\/p>\n

\"Maiko<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We decided to walk to Kyoto Station from Gion<\/a>. We came across another beer vending machine, and this time Aaron could not pass it up. When we got to Kyoto Station, the light was fantastic so I snapped a few pictures there as well.<\/p>\n

Aaron buys a beer,<\/p>\n

\"Aaron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kyoto station as darkness falls,<\/p>\n

\"Kyoto<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

… and in color.<\/p>\n

\"Kyoto<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We ended the night with a very satisfying Sapporo ramen at the Nagoya train station. We got home and Aaron passed out. Not bad for day 1.<\/p>\n

And on to Tokyo<\/strong><\/p>\n

After a great day in Kyoto, Tokyo promised to be even better. We were planning on meeting Tomo and then running around the city together. Except Tomo was too tired to get out of bed so I rearranged our plan \u00e2\u20ac\u201c better known as making it up as you go along. We got to our first cool place, I pulled my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153big\u00e2\u20ac\u009d camera out of the bag and turned it on. Except it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn on. Drat. The battery was fully charged, and snuggly in the charger in my apartment. Well, luckily I have two cameras. I pulled out my year old point and shoot and powered it on. Except it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t power on either. It had its battery. So Tokyo was captured on the iPhone camera. Oh well. The bad thing is I ended buying a new battery for the point and shoot, and the problem still existed. So I bought a new charger. Still won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t power on. So I guess the camera is just dead. I really don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to buy a new one here because they are more expensive (yeah, go figure) but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve paid for half a camera just trying to get the broken one working.<\/p>\n

We first went to Harajuku \/ Meiji shrine and looked at the Goth. Where did everyone go? I guess I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m 15 years behind the times. Aaron declared he was temple \/ shrine saturated. That didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take long. We wanted to check out a bicycle shop nearby so we walked through Yoyogi Park. I had never been there before, and its HUGE. We checked out the remarkably tiny bike shop and walked down Kitayama to Shibuya. We found conveyor belt sushi so lunch was solved. We were meeting Tomo at Shibuya Station and ran across a festival in the central part of Shibuya. With bon odori and everything. What the heck? It was a strange site.<\/p>\n

Once we met up with Tomo we ran some errands and wandered up to Omotesando \/ Aoyama. We did the usual Prada building gander, and walked through A Bathing Ape. At that point, we all declared it was time to sit and chill. Aaron and I had been walking for days on end. We went to the Paris priced Anniversaire caf\u00c3\u00a9 \/ wedding factory and had some drinks. It was nice actually to sit and watch the people go by while chatting. I love the European caf\u00c3\u00a9 feel and they are few and far between.<\/p>\n

We then went to Tsukishima to enjoy monja and okonomiyake. Yum. Tomo is an expert monja and okonomiyake chef, so we had a great meal. And Aaron wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t grossed out at all by it. We headed to the Oedo onsen in Odaiba and had a nice soak before catching the last train to Nagoya. What a weekend. Busy, and fun filled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weekends ago a friend of mine from LA came to visit me for the weekend. Yes, for the weekend. We were IMing one day and I asked him when he was coming to visit. At that time I thought my days here were numbered (now, I think I have gotten extended again … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sprint Japan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-content","category-vacations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.triplefstudio.com\/yokoso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}