Night Illumination at Eikando Zenrin-Ji

My last year's night illumination experience was much sober than this year's action-packed Kiyomizudera adventure. On the 26th of November 2013 - it was a weekday - we went to Kyoto to view autumn leaves. We visited Nanzen-in Temple in the afternoon and lined up at around 5pm for the night illumination at Eikando Zenrin-Ji. I love how the leaves are so low that you can take pictures of them up close.

P.S. It was starting that time that I got hooked on taking selfies. :)

Arashiyama

I have been living in Japan for more than a year now and I feel guilty that I don't travel as much as I wanted to. I spend most of my days fretting about the next presentation, or simply whiling time away. I keep telling my self there will be time to visit places I want to see later on, after I have read my readings, finished conducting my research for the thesis, and so on. And I realized, the thesis will be done by July next year, and by then I would be busy preparing for graduation. In no time, I would be busy packing up my stuff as I would be leaving Japan in October. When I think about leaving this country, it pains me to think that I would not be able to walk down the street anytime I want and eat at Ramen Tarou hahaha.

But I digress. The point of this entry is that there are places that I got to visit for this first time this November, when some of my friends from the office visited. I particularly loved visiting Arashiyama which looked spectacular in Autumn.

Buwis-buhay Night Illumination at Kiyomizudera Temple

In my last post, I said that I would be starting a project here in my blog that probably no one reads haha. So far, I haven't decided on the details of the project because of so many things. Time flies so fast. Real life gets in the way.

This month has been a crazy month - two groups of friends visited me in succession. I am very glad that I got to visit places I have never been to before.

I have been to Kiyomizudera a few times, and I really love the uphill climb in Higashiyama District which is lined with quaint stores offering Japanese omiyage or small gifts. This time was different because we wanted to see the night illumination in Kiyomizudera, said to offer one of the best autumn views in Japan. We went there at around five in the afternoon, and there was already a long queue towards Kiyomizudera. The temple closes at around 4:30 in the afternoon and the night illumination starts at 6:00. There was a store near the entrance of the temple which offers free samples of mochi and other delicacies, as well as free tea so we just stayed there and treated ourselves to what we called the "free buffet".

At around 6 in the evening, people started to enter the temple and we thought that in an hour or so, the line will start to get shorter. It didn't. So we went to the foot of the hill where line ended, only to find out that a lot of people are simply cutting in line and it is "attack mode-unahan" when we buy the tickets. When it was our turn to buy our tickets, we had to push and shove, we were pushed and shoved. Inside the temple, and as we made our way towards the bridge which offers the best view, we had to box other people out, otherwise, we won't be able to get decent pictures at all. It was cold but we were sweating, we couldn't breathe. Siksikan, wagas! But we managed to get some pictures and we had a lot of fun!

Challenge

I was talking to my best friend Gladys yesterday and she was telling me to make full use of my stay here in Japan, to go out whenever I can and shoot some pictures. Admittedly, I have been holed up lately either in my room or in the students's room in the university preparing for my first presentation in the seminar and the field work in Tokyo.

So I am posing a challenge to myself. I said in Instagram that I would be posting at least one picture a day. But here in my blog (that probably no one reads), I want to do some kind of project, similar to what Julie from "Julie and Julia" did. I would post the details soon, and I hope my plans and my resolve won't fizzle out. :)

Old books

I love the smell of books. I sometimes go to bookstores just to browse the titles of the books, and pick up a book in random and smell its pages. I love the smell of old ones, too, although they can smell like dust or some other. Old books with their frayed and dog-eared pages feel like old friends. They hold secrets, they have evoked laughter or sadness or even boredom at one time or another.

New books are quite expensive, and I haven't really warmed up to the idea of buying and reading ebooks, which can be cheaper. I was looking for a second-hand bookstore in my area so I just googled "second-hand bookstore Kansai" and I found Wantage Books Kobe. It sits just across Shin-Kobe Station. I had to rely on the map provided here. They are open only on Saturdays and Sundays, so I set off one Saturday to look for the shop. And what I found was love! You can buy books for as low as ¥100.

I am surely going back there again one of these days.

A trip down memory lane: Kamakura, Kanagawa

I went to Tokyo in the second week of June and instead of soaking up the sights and sounds of fast-paced Tokyo, my friends decided to bring me to Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture, about an hour away from Central Tokyo. Kamakura is an old political center of Japan, similar to Kyoto and Nara.

Our first stop was Meigetsu-in, a Rinzai Zen temple known for its pretty hydrangeas, which bloom around June. It is also known as the Temple of Hydrangeas.

Our friend Shingo made reservations for a two-hour Kaiseki-ryōri lunch in a restaurant in Kamakura. The ambiance in the restaurant was very Zen. We were seated in a room with a view of a nice garden. Lunch was very elegant.

After lunch, we went to see the Great Buddha of Kamakura, which has an interesting history. The ticket says that the Buddha statue was cast in 1252 and originally housed inside a large temple hall. However, the temple buildings were destroyed several times by typhoons and a tidal wave in the 14th and 15th centuries. So, since 1495, the Buddha has been standing in the open air.

Shingo lived in Kamakura as a child and we went to his pre-school which was beside a pond. He was trying to push down the turtle in the pond, and he said that he used to do that when he was studying there.

Abandoned Fukuchiyama line

My friend Ian asked me if i want to go hiking, and my first response was, "define hiking". I am in no condition to hike (I have never been in a condition to hike haha), but he sent me a link of the place we were going to visit, it was mostly on level surface, but he said that if we still have energy we can go up the hill.

The destination was an abandoned section of the Fukuchiyama line between Namaze and Takedao stations. It was said to have been abandoned some 25 years ago. There are tunnels, a river nestled in the mountain, big rocks, paradise really.

Hiking buddies

After lunch we decided to go up the hill where there is a nice stream, so I went up with them thinking, okay, maybe it is not that far, but after around 50 meters haha, I was already panting so I said, I am just going to wait for them in the picnic area. It was quite slippery, going down, and I did not want to slide all the way down so I used this time to take pictures of grasses and flowers, so people would think that it is on purpose that I am going down in sitting position. :))

Baguio kind of life

I have always been in love with Baguio. I'm crazy about its weather, its food, its second hand shopping scene. Now I'm in Japan living in a place that is a bit similar to Baguio, except perhaps, for the traffic and congestion that has characterized Baguio in the last years. I love that my school is in the mountains, and that when I go up my apartment, I can see the lights of the houses at night. When I have classes in the evening, I am greeted by the myriad lights in the distance. I am thankful. :)

Miyajima

After a day of touring Hiroshima, we spent a night in a backpackers inn near the port to Miyajima. Early the next day, we boarded a ferry to the shrine island. I was quite excited because I recently saw the second Wolverine movie and there was a part there where he stayed at Miyajima.