Kyoto Station

Lee and I both had today off of work, it was great. I think we should *always* get Wednesdays off from work ;) I've been super-busy this week, I worked an hour over on both Monday and Tuesday, and this one computer system I use has been acting up a lot so it's been a frustrating couple of days. That's why having today off was extra nice, and the weather was so gorgeous this morning it would have been totally criminal not to take the dogs out for a walk. Luckily Sadie has given up her career as a bowling ball so it's once again safe to go outside with her. I think she got scared when she knocked me over a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, a month after we went to Kyoto I'm finally coming near the end of our pictures from the three-day trip we took ;) I think I'll only have two more posts after this and then I'll have to find something else to talk about. So today's post is about Kyoto Station, which is a really big train station. And bus station. And six-story mall. There's also an underground mall/shopping area thing too, which is where we went to Subway for lunch. Um, weird. The topping choices include things like shrimp and avocados and tuna salad, and NO ranch dressing. But back to the station itself...

There are a series of really long escalators to take you to the upper levels of the station, so here's the view from about the midpoint. There's a roof over the center of the main entrance to the station, but it's also open to the air. The next picture is from the same spot, just turned around 180 degrees towards the top.

I can imagine that this airy setup would be a little bit on the not-fun side when it gets really cold and rainy, but since we had gorgeous weather when we were there, it was awesome. It's hard to get a real good sense of the size of this place from our pictures, but trust me, it was HUGE. Too bad we didn't get a photo of the outside of it.

This pic (above) was taken from pretty much the top of the station. The sides of the building are all made out of reflective glass so Lee was trying to get a cool reflection shot here.

I thought it was funny to come across New Orleans' famous Cafe' du Monde in Japan. Too bad we'd just eaten when we were here taking pictures, I wouldn't have minded a beignet. (Did I spell that right? Been a few years since my last French class...) I don't think you can see it in the picture, but the dining area with the streetlights also has French Quarter street signs. I can't remember which streets they were but I did recognize the names when I read them since Lee and I have been to the French Quarter. We took a couple of ghost tours there, it was awesome. But I digress.

I think I mentioned before that there's a city ordnance that no buildings are to be taller than 60 meters (Kyoto Station is that tall). They made an exception for the Kyoto Tower, which is supposed to kind of look like a candle according to our tour guide (we didn't tour the station with a group, but the guide mentioned it when we were running all over Kyoto the day prior to when we took these pics). The tower is reflected in the glass on the front side of the station and I thought we had some pictures of that but I didn't see 'em when I was choosing pictures for this post.

And there's the tower at night from the same spot. We ate dinner at a restaurant in the station one night since it was right across the street from our hotel.

Pretty impressive for a train station, huh?

Kiyomizu, Kimonos, and Crepes

I meant to update the blog a couple days ago but time just got away from me. For once I'm fairly satisfied with what I managed to accomplish during the weekend--I got a LOT done on my super secret stitching project (so it *will* be done for Christmas, yay); I made 20 Thanksgiving cards (haven't taken a picture yet though); I cleaned up quite a bit of stuff around the house and did laundry; did some reading for class; and I designed my Christmas cards and cut all the cardstock for them. They'll be super-simple this year but I figure that's okay since I'm working full time and doing school this year. They *have* to be simple or else they won't go out on time ;)

So anyway, here's the next installment of Kyoto pics. I forget what number we're up to :p but today's pictures are all from the Kiyomizu-dera shrine which is up in the mountains. Well, maybe foothills, but definitely elevated from the main part of town. So here's most of the buildings that belong to this particular shrine:

The famous thing about this place is the three springs. If you drink from one, you're supposed to be blessed with good health; another is wealth, and the third is wisdom, but a lot of the Japanese believe that if you drink from all three then the gods think you're too greedy and you get nothing. Ha! Here's where you drink from whichever spring you choose:

While we had a discussion about which spring would be the "best" one to drink from, we didn't do it since we were there with a tour group and there's just not enough time to do things like that *and* take pictures if you don't want the tour guide to strand you there while they go on to the next stop. Actually this was our last stop of the day, and we were here in the "golden hour" right before sunset when everything seems to glow.

If you look at the first picture again, this one directly above where I'm typing is the building on the far left. Just past it is a stone that has "Buddha's footprints" on it, and legend has it that if you touch the footprints then it will wash away all your sins.

Not to be disrespectful, but if those are Buddha's footprints then he was related to Bigfoot. And he had monkey toes. Here's a view of the city from where we were:

Little bit hazy and unfortunately we noticed we have some schmutz on our camera lens, it just shows up really bad in that picture.

Guess what else I photographed? Kimono butts!!!!!!!!!!

Been a long time since we had kimono butts featured on the ol' bloggypoo, huh? Bwahahahaaaa!

I seriously would like to get myself a kimono before we leave here, I think they're so gorgeous (not just the butts, but the front too). And check out Hello Kitty in the shop window to the left :) To get to Kiyomizu, we had to walk up a winding street lined with souvenir shops (lots of kokeshi dolls but they were overpriced, although I did buy some postcards) before we actually reached the shrine itself. And then coming back we had to remember our landmarks so we could find the bus again; one was a Spider-Man out in front of a shop, and another landmark was a truly ginormous teacup on the roof of another shop. On our way back to the buses, Ree and I decided to try some authentic Japanese cuisine.

Stuffed crepes at IHOP! Ok, so it's not IHOP, but it is stuffed crepes. They all looked so good...

'cept those ones with the hot dogs in the middle. Say it with me now: bleh. Ree and I got crepes with bananas, strawberries, chocolate sauce, and more whipped cream than you can shake a stick at. When we got back on the bus, everyone else in our tour group was jealous.

Hey look, it's us!! When we were looking through all our photos from the Kyoto trip at the airport on our way back, we realized just how few pictures we were actually in, so we said we should cut ourselves out of this photo and just Photoshop us on top of at least one photo from every other location. I still think that would be funny but we didn't do it :p

Lots of Birthday Cards

I've made a bunch of birthday cards in the last several weeks and I *still* missed several birthdays. Plus I'm terribly late sending out some of the cards I did make...sigh. This whole work-school-crafting time balance is still a work in progress. First up is a Halloween card, which doubles as my friend Jeng's birthday card because his birthday is on Halloween.

So I put a Halloween sentiment in the ones I sent out for Halloween, and happy birthday inside Jeng's. But I haven't sent out Jeng's yet because I am a bad friend. :p

Next up is something girly...

I love hummingbirds, they're so pretty. My great-grandmother had a bunch of hummingbird stuff in her house as well as a feeder outside her kitchen window. I remember sitting very still in the kitchen with a camera poised and ready, trying to get a picture of the birds as they came to the feeder...those little things are fast!!

Ok, how about a fall birthday card?

This one's for my brother. The card base is a really saturated orange color, the colors are off in the photo since I took it at night but what can you do. I need to get this one sent out ASAP but it's probably still going to be a bit late.

One last card for my buddy Amber, whose birthday is TODAY!

I think I need to put glitter in the flower centers, whatchoo think?

There's the inside of Amber's card. It's her fault I own that flower stamp set; I borrowed hers and then just had to get one for myself. Ha! We're going to go out to lunch tomorrow to celebrate her birthday and I got her a really cool present. Ok, probably not as cool as a Cricut Expression, but I suppose her hubby is allowed bragging rights for best prezzie :)

Heian Shrine

I'm back with more Kyoto pictures and--surprise!--they're of another Shinto shrine we visited. This one is the Heian Shrine, which our guide book describes as one of Kyoto's largest and "newest" shrines since it didn't arrive on the scene until 1895. Hah. So let's get started with the pictures, shall we?

The shrine is comprised of several buildings around a large central court (gravel, of course). There were quite a few people but since everything is so spread out it kinda looks deserted in the photos, doesn't it?

Lee and I took a photo of some lanterns at a shrine on Okinawa and I was kinda trying to recreate that shot...didn't quite work as I'd imagined, but I like the photo nonetheless.

I just love taking photos like this, I think they look really neat. You may remember the one I took like this at the first garden we visited in Kyoto.

We stayed in the courtyard area for only a short time before our tour group trundled off behind the buildings and through the shrine's garden. There's a large pond and at one point you can cross it on a series of stepping stones, but first you have to read this sign:

I couldn't have said it better myself. (Ok, really, I know their English is a heck of a lot better than my Japanese, but that doesn't mean I can't get tickled about things like this!) Here are the highly treacherous stepping stones:

Ok, maybe they'd be difficult if we were wearing the kinds of impractical footwear that the Japanese women seem to adore. Just so you know, I managed not to fall into the pond when crossing the stepping stones.

There's Ree (and the peace sign!) with the one lone tree that had started turning colors for fall :) On the other side of the garden is a Chinese-style covered bridge and we got someone to take our picture on it.

What, you can't tell that's us? :p I think we needed a fill-in flash on this one. Oh well, we tried! They have carp in the pond too, and you can feed them if you like...

(Click on the picture so you can read the sign.) Wonder if anyone ever tries to go fishing off the bridge here...maybe not. Here's a shot of the bridge itself:

Pretty, huh? We saw some pictures of the garden at different times of the year when we were on our way back to the tour bus, and this garden is famous for its irises. Wish we could have seen that, the photo was absolutely gorgeous!

Well, I've gotta get to work. You guys in the States have a great evening!

Superdogs!

Ah, I love Halloween. What's not to love about a holiday that revolves around costumes and candy? And oh yeah, DOG costumes!!

I just love the look on Vee's face, I think he's sticking his tongue out at Lee.

Vee is always a good sport about putting on a costume.

Isn't he just totally adorable? And heroic? Y'know, in a doggy kind of way. Ok, ok, so the bandanna head thingie kinda makes him look like Little Red Riding Hood, but whatever.

Of course, we couldn't leave Sadie out of this...

Although she wishes we would. Heh. She didn't put up as much of a fight this year about getting in her costume as she has in years past, though.

"Fine, take my picture, but I refuse to smile for the camera!"

Yep, she's cute too. I think we'll need to put on the costumes again tomorrow so I can get a photo of Bee and Vee together, we really didn't take that many this year, probably because Lee was busy making dinner and didn't want it to burn just so he could satisfy my desire for oodles of goofy Halloween pictures of our dogs. Right after we took these pictures, I took the kids down to Scott and Tiana's house to show off their costumes. Unfortunately they both kept walking out of the front legs of the costumes *and* it was raining, bummer. So like I said, I see a mini costume redux tomorrow after I get out of class. The costumes should be dried out by then too; we got totally soaked even though we were only outside for like 10 to 15 minutes.

We got one more treat this Halloween, lookie!

We still have three orchid plants in our house, but for pretty much the entire last year all we've had is leaves, no flowers. This plant *finally* bloomed this week, much to our excitement. This is one of the teeny orchid plants that I got on our anniversary last year. The other two plants are green and seem to be healthy enough, they're just not interested in blooming right now. They seem to like where we have them in this house better than where they were in our old house though, so maybe we're making progress.

Anyway, it's pretty much time for me to head on off to bed. I've got class all day tomorrow...so in the meantime, happy howl-oween!

The Golden Pavilion

Ok, I'm back with Part 5 of the Kyoto pics. Today's installment is all about the Golden Pavilion, or Kinkaku-ji. It was originally built in 1397, burned down a couple times, and then was completely destroyed by arson in 1950. (The arsonist was a mentally ill man who was an acolyte at the temple; there's even a book (and maybe movie) about the incident which is called, appropriately enough, The Golden Pavilion). The temple was rebuilt exactly as it was before the fire, but now tourists aren't allowed up close to or inside the building. Our tour guide said that some rich and powerful people get to see the inside, so if any of us in the tour group ever get to be rich or famous, we should invite her to go if we ever get to see the inside of the temple ;) So without further ado, here's some pictures!

See, there's that special Kyoto-blend super-reflective water at work here. I took most of these pictures and I wasn't at all sure that *any* of them were going to come out good, but then we got home and discovered that most of them look really nice. Like this.

Here's a branchy shot for you, Vicki!

What's funny is that it looks all tranquil in the pictures, but really there was a huge crowd where I was taking the pictures from. It took a bit of doing to get up close enough to the fence so that I could take pictures without anyone being in the shot. Anyway, you walk around the side of the pond to the right and you can get a leetle closer to the temple, so I got this shot:

That's the bronze phoenix on top of the temple. And in case you're wondering, yes, the entire building is covered with gold leafing. Well, the sides are anyway, but not the roof. There's some more buildings that are part of the complex, and this:

That, my friends, is a 600-year-old bonsai tree. I can't imagine a living thing that is *that* old (obviously it wasn't affected by the fires that took out the temple, huh?). And just because I like him:

He was on the gable of one of the rooftops, I think on the building to the left of the ancient bonsai tree. Anyway, after that we walked around a bit in some of the gardens adjacent to the temple and we saw this...

I'm guessing that it's good luck if you throw a coin in and it lands inside the bowl, maybe this is the Japanese version of a wishing fountain or something? Oh, here's a view of the back side of the temple:

And another one 'cause I couldn't figure out which one I liked best...

I got a pack of postcards at the gift shop that have a bunch of different photographs of the temple at various seasons, look how pretty it would be in the snow:

Know what else they had at the gift shop?

Yep, I got my very own Golden Pavilion kokeshi doll. This was the only type they had at the gift shop so I had to get her. I saw quite a few dolls at various gift shops around Kyoto, but a lot of them were exactly the same as the ones I can get on Okinawa, except more expensive. So this was the only doll I bought in Kyoto. And that's all she wrote about the Golden Pavilion.

So I started this blog post earlier this evening before Lee and I took the kiddos out for a walk. The weather has been super-nice lately so we've been out pretty much every evening this week. Well, we were almost home and let the kids off their leashes, and I started running up to our door trying to get Vader to run after me, and then Sadie came out of nowhere and just plowed right into my legs. Lee said she just knocked my feet right out from under me and he wasn't close enough to catch me, so down I went. I smacked my head pretty good on the sidewalk and I have a scraped elbow, but I was more concerned about Sadie. She landed in the grass next to the sidewalk and was whining like she was really hurting. I never felt so bad in my life as listening to that, my poor girl! (Ok, even though it was her fault, I don't want her to be hurt.) Lee and I looked her over pretty good and we can't see anything wrong with her, so hopefully she won't be limping or anything tomorrow. He also doctored my elbow up and took a look at my noggin where I bonked it, so he took good care of me. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a lovely headache tomorrow, which is a fabulous way to kick off a full day of class. *sigh* Last week Sadie tangled with a centipede, and this week she tries to take me out on our nightly walk. What am I gonna do with that girl??

Scrapariffic PROOF

K, I'm taking a break from the Kyoto pictures today to bring you photographic proof that I have been working on my scrapbooks. Unfortunately I haven't finished any of these layouts, but that's because I haven't figured out exactly what I want to do yet. Behold!

Pictures from our trip to Yokohama's Chinatown last December, this is the Kantei-byo (Kanto-bei?) temple. The colors are waaayyyy off in the photo; it's actually Riding Hood Red and Crushed Curry, so a pretty red not wonky orange for the background, and the yellow on the sides isn't quite so...yellow. I still need the title, journaling, and some kind of embellishment before I can call this layout done (same for the next one).

Same trip, this time the Maso-byo temple a couple blocks away from the first one. I used the same colors but in reverse, and trust me when I say the colors look a lot better in real life than they do on here. I wanted this one to be similar to the first layout, I'm not just running out of layout or color combination ideas here :p

Last layout in progress (sorry the photo is a little blurry, but you get the idea):

So really all this one needs is a bit of journaling and possibly some type of embellishment, but I don't know what. I was thinking I could fit some kind of small round SOMETHING above and below "cruise" in the title, and then on the corner of the pictures on the right page just under my face. I like the title--my sweet mommy sent me a couple of new Sizzlits alphabets a while back and this is the first time I've used them, this one is Funky Brush. Anyway, the background on this layout really IS orange (Dusty Durango, to be exact). Lee and I had a long discussion about what would be the right color behind the patterned paper and Dusty Durango won. I like it.

So anyway LIZ, there's proof I haven't forgotten how to scrapbook. I just can't seem to finish a layout all the way before I start the next one. Snort!