Abrams Falls
Friday I met with my friend, and we headed towards Abrams Falls. I had picked up some maps and a waterfall guide from one of the multiple ranger offices, and Abrams seemed a good compromise between accessibility and beauty. To reach it, we had to drive around the western side of the park. There was a Honda S2000 convention at the Fontana resort, and indeed the mountain roads were lousy with little Honda convertibles zipping around.
After a bit of that, we turned towards Cades Cove to reach the trailhead. Cades cove is a single lane loop that winds around a valley in the mountains, with several historic buildings, a campground and such. It's very leisurely, because anyone who stops or slows down forces the entire chain of traffic to follow suit. I'm guessing it'll get converted to a shuttle bus system before long, as it was pretty crazy even during a weekday in the spring. Aside from a pair of bears, which elicited the reaction of people pulling over and rushing towards them until a ranger told them to get back, the drive was pretty if uneventful, if pretty and idyllic.
The waterfall guide claimed that the hike to Abrams falls, some two and a half miles each way, should be listed as difficult due to its rocky nature. The official signage at the start of the trail pegged it at moderately difficult, and after the previous two days it was indeed a cakewalk.
On the way we had to cross a number of bridges that consisted of a log with one handrail. For mobility or balance challenged individuals, especially if it's been raining, those could be pretty tough.
The falls were nice. Not the highest, but they had a lot of volume of water to make for an impressive spectacle, and a rock ledge let you get right next to the falls. The pool of water was a lot deeper than the ones I had seen in Panthertown Valley, with signage warning about drowning danger, which I'm willing to believe. The waterfall guide had mentioned a log that could be traversed for some different photo angles; it was pretty apparent on the side of the pool. In fact, there was a bit of an island and a number of fallen trees and some rocks that allowed passage to it. To cross the second channel would've required walking on the below log, which I wasn't quite willing to attempt.
The next day we took some time to visit the Talking Leaves Cherokee bookstore, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, and the Qualla arts and crafts co-op store. All three were quite nice and worth a visit if you're in the area. With that, I left the region behind, feeling like I had barely begun to scratch the surface.
Equipment Notes
I had bough new hiking boots, a pair of Salomon Cosmic 4D GTXs as they were on sale at a good 40% off. I wasn't entirely sure that I needed them, as I had been using my old army-style jungle boots before, but especially after the climb to Charlies Bunion I was sold. The ankle support in the Salomons was way better, and even after twelve miles of hiking no part of the foot hurt, and they were lighter with a more confident grip. They're also vastly more comfortable to lace and tighten than the jungle boots, and waterproof to boot (though the tongue isn't attached all the way to the top, so they're really only useful for maybe four inches of water).
The other revelation were the trekking poles. Mine were a pair of Leki Makalus, and I had been playing with them on hikes in Florida, where they were kind of nice to poke at stuff and get a bit more stability. Crossing rivers and on grades in the mountains they turned out to be incredibly useful. I used them when crossing rivers to give me a lot more lateral stability; when traversing along muddy banks I could stick them against little rock crevices or roots to keep from sliding down; when going downhill they served as a neat railing to rest against to take some of the weight off my feet. In flat country I could take them or leave them. In hilly terrain I'll absolutely pack them again.
As a camera, instead of my usual kit I took the Olympus Pen E-P2 which I had gotten for cheap used. It's a view-finderless, flashless camera with a sensor that's maybe half the size of my SLR's — still many times the size of a usual point-and-shoot, but not as good as even a low-end digital SLR. On the other hand, it's maybe a third of the volume and weight of my usual kit. In daylight, though, the results are fairly close to the full-size camera. Usability suffers, and I'm still not comfortable using the LCD screen for composition, but all in all, I think I have a winner for future camping and hiking excursions.
As a tripod, I carried the Kenko Clamp Pro100 which I had bought from Yodobashi camera on my trip to Japan. It's a cast aluminum contraption that can stand as a tripod, or can be used to grip a railing, branch, or any other similar object. It has a tiny integral ballhead. It slipped right into my Camelbak, even with a fleece sharing space, and was a lot more bearable to carry than my full tripod and ball head. Not nearly as useful for panoramas or super critical work, but plenty for long exposures and self-portraits with the Olympus.
Having outdoorsy friends was good, as they provided me with guidebooks, maps and suggestions; two of which were a hike to Charlies Bunion and Panthertown Valley.
Charlies Bunion
While I knew the weather was going to be nice, when I set out from Bryson City towards Newfound Gap my car, parked in the shade overnight, indicated a temperature in the low 50s (~12 °C). By the time I reached the trailhead, the increase in altitude had dropped the temperature to a nice, round 32 degrees (0 °C) in the sun — needless to mention my wool hat and gloves were back at the hotel.
No matter, with my hood up and a brisk pace I set out along the rocky trail, encountering ice and icicles. The Appalachian Trail, which I followed, ran largely along the ridges of the peaks; depending on which side of the ridge the trail was on the temperature fluctuated between perfectly comfortable sun-warmed spring and a finger-numbing cold mountain wind.
A lot of the hemlocks were suffering from a rampaging disease, and many plants hadn't yet started to wake up from their winter slumber. Even so, the views from the mountain ridges were spectacular. After five-six miles, I reached my destination and made use of the little pocket tripod I had been lugging along in my Camelbak.
I encountered a few other day hikers, and we were in agreement that Charlies Bunion was about as steep a place as we wanted to hike; they all had said "thanks, but no thanks" to going to Angel's Landing in Zion. Indeed, the southern approach was fine; the northern one was a bit more harrowing. As long as one didn't climb over the top of the rock formation, the little stone pocket of the Bunion itself was pretty safe. The wind was freezing and brutal, though, so I retreated back the trail to the nearby Icewater Spring shelter to eat my trail bar lunch. By then some other day hikers as well as a number of through-hikers started to show up, and it was pretty neat to listen to their stories.
On the way back, I made a detour to The Jump Off, a ledge on a sheer drop with, as usual, spectacular views. The signage and guidebooks claimed that it was a 0.3 mile hike, but it certainly felt like several miles, being steep and very rocky. I did reach it, enjoy the view, and then made my way back as a second group showed up and started to take pictures much too close to the edge for me to bear.
I made it back to the trailhead as the sun was setting, after having done about 12 miles total. The steep grades had taken their toll and I could feel my age in my knees all too well. Still, the Clingman's Dome access road was literally feet from the Newfound Gap parking lot, so I made a detour there. From the parking lot to the top of the peak was 0.5 miles; after the grueling hike to and from Charlies Bunion it was very nearly too much for me, I barely crawled up the mountain. With teeth-gritting I did conquer the peak and climbed the observation tower — the freezing wind quickly drove me and my fellow tourists back to the comfort of our cars, though. I made it back to the hotel properly worn out, but really happy with the progress so far and the expectation of more days of great hiking.
Panthertown Valley
A number of trails criss-cross the Panthertown Valley area. Some are marked as Forest Service flagged trails and appear on National Geographic and similar maps (if at too small a scale to be really useful) and on some freebie maps, but everything I read suggested that I had to procure Burt Kornegay's Slickrock Expeditions map. As I didn't have time to mail-order it before my departure, I made a detour through the Nantahala Outdoor Center, which carried it; with the map in hand I set out.
The first realization was that the trailhead, which looked to be fairly close on the map to Bryson City where I was staying, was in fact a two hour drive away. Still, I found it — you have to either waypoint the GPS or have good directions, as there is no signage whatsoever until the very last turn, and even then it's minimal and easy to miss. I do get the impression that the locals are perfectly happy to keep this area a bit less popular.
The trail started off quite depressing; a lot of barren trees, with hardly any green in sight. Fairly quickly I found the falls closest to the trailhead, Schoolhouse Falls. While they're easy to reach, they're also some of the most spectacular in the area, and allow you access behind the falls, as well as featuring a wonderful pool that would be inviting indeed during summer weather.
From the Schoolhouse falls I began to rely on the Kornegay map, and headed towards a loop and off-shoot marked "Serenity Point." The topographical information matched reality, and the trail was a pretty steep ascent, ending on a hill with a lot of bare rock surface; by now the sun was beating down and the temperature was nearing t-shirt weather.
The rock had occasional chalk arrows on it, and this became a life saver. Even with the hints I had to backtrack frequently trying to find the trail. The amazing views more than made up for the climb and confusion, however. This is one location that is a must visit for fall colors, when the valley and surrounding hills truly come alive.
From serenity Point the trail headed down and connected with one of the Forest Service trails. Up another hill, then off another unmarked local trail, towards Mac's Falls. This local trail was at times pretty densely grown, but the kicker came when I reached the creek and realized I had to cross it. At Schoolhouse falls there were rocks set up for easy rock hopping; this crossing had a few rocks as well, but not enough to make for a safe crossing. After a while of looking for alternate routes, I decided to take some risks and rely on my trekking poles and the gore-tex in my boots to pole-vault some of the more challenging sections, and made it safely across.
The trail following the river was, in fact, where the map said it would be. Arguably it wasn't as much a "footpath" as the legend indicated as a deer trail. Boots and hiking poles were absolutely necessary, and even the Camelbak became a liability on many an occasion as I had to squeeze through tight spaces between trunks and under branches; some sections were on very steep, muddy banks only one misstep away from taking a dunk in the creek. If you elect to take these trails, be warned that they can be quite challenging and you need either waterproof footwear or be willing the wade.
On the other hand, I had encountered a couple at Schoolhouse falls, and nobody since, so the sense of having gotten away from civilization was there. The ground had a lot of iron pyrite flakes and quartz, and parts of the forest floor and trail glittered like fairy woods.
The plan was to follow the creek past two falls back to my starting point. After a bit, I reached the first of these, Mac's falls.
Not as spectacular as the Schoolhouse falls, but a nice, secluded set of falls much less likely to have anyone around. Continuing on downstream, Pothole falls were within sight distance; these falls were very small, but the reason behind the name was quickly obvious, as a number of indentations had been worn downstream of the falls into the rock that now formed the banks.
From there, it was another fifteen to twenty minutes along the "footpath" to reach Schoolhouse falls, and the trail back to the parking area.
One of my friends had recommended the restaurant at the Nantahala Outdoor Center, but once more I was so far out that I couldn't reach it before closing. In fact, a lot of Bryson City closed by 7 pm; one of the exceptions was the local Mexican restaurant, Guayabitos. The food was good, if normal south-eastern Mexican fare. It bears a mention, because the service was outstanding. My glass was never less than half-full before a number of busboys and waiters would volunteer to fill it and inquire after any other needs I had. Finally, with a nice meal in my belly and muscles aching with achievement I headed back to the hotel for a solid night's sleep.
(As a technical note, in lieu of my usual Nikon D300, I only carried an Olympus Pen E-P2 on this trip.)
Patrick Rothfuss: The Name of the Wind
In the acknowledgments Rothfuss thanks his father for teaching him that anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time, and Rothfuss certainly seems to have listened. Wikipedia tells me that he spent seven years writing this novel, and the level of polish shows.
The book is a fantasy novel, the growing-up tale of a hero, switching between present day and his youth. This kind of temporal interleaving can be done well or poorly, and here it is done extremely well and adds to the tale; the story is the majority of the book, present day only a little sprinkling here and there to contrast the events. The characters are fully fleshed, the world and the people and things inhabiting it all seem real. The protagonist endures great anguish, which reflects through the pages, and joy; it's not fluffy stuff.
But... I should have been clued in from the well-hidden subtitle "The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day One." The paperback edition is a whopping 722 pages of actual text with small margins, and it ends in the middle of the tale — if anything somewhat nearer the beginning than the end. It's only because of the masterful telling that I followed along.
Unlike the much fluffier Wen Spencer novels I just finished, The Name of the Wind did not keep me up late reading, so it didn't quite have that magic. On the other hand, I felt good and satisfied on a deeper level once I was done — aside from the slight grumpiness I felt when I realized how little into the story I had made it.
Just for the remarkably wonderful storytelling, both in plot, characters and language, I'm going to ignore the shortcomings and give it four of my five stars.
Wen Spencer: Tinker and Wolf Who Rules
The first novel hails from 2003, though it feels like it was inspired by, or belongs to, the urban fantasy genre of the 80s; settings in which life is pretty simple, squatting in abandoned buildings is cool (it isn't), junk yards are awesome (they kind of are), and banding together with friends and family matters a lot (it does). Also, money's tight and bartering for things is the way it's done. In style and setting it reminds me of Born to Run and the rest of the SERRAted series by Mercedes Lackey et alia. Specifically, it differs from the truckloads of current urban fantasy / paranormal romance books littering the shelves in remaining bookstores.
Or at least that's how it started. That style of setting and character interaction stays throughout the two books, but Spencer's plot quickly begins to unravel into some major events. The books have many flaws: there's a distinct air of Mary Sue, there are plenty of plot holes, the setting itself at times could be utterly ridiculous... but whatever magic she pours into the mix makes it all irrelevant.
The setting is such: The Chinese have built an interdimensional space gate through which to send colony ships to the universe. As an unintended consequence, on the other side of the planet, Pittsburgh is shifted into another dimension (Elfhome, an alternate earth with Elves and magic) whenever the space gate is operating. The protagonist, nicknamed Tinker, is a young orphan running a junkyard with her brother, whenever she's not busy inventing some weird gadget that bridges magic and technology. One day, she meets an Elvish prince... and while the broad lines of being the right person in the right place at the right time to lift the girl from rags to riches unravel as expected, the rest of the plot careens in quite unexpected directions. While the setting sounds contrived, it's pretty original, and Spencer has the power to make the whole thing work.
The pacing is good, and the books are outstanding entertainment, the best kind of "I'll be tired at work tomorrow, I have to finish this chapter" literature, and the characters and events remain as pleasant distractions in your thoughts as you finally decide to turn off the lights.
I fully expect that others may pick up this series and give up in frustration halfway through the first book and call me daft. I don't care, I'm giving them four out of my five stars.
Cail Carriger: Timeless
The fifth and final novel in the Parasol Protectorate series. The series is an alternate reality steampunk comedy; Victorian era England with werewolves and vampires. Aside from the setting and characters, Carriger's completely excessive prose is a central element of the draw of the books and method of making light of the stuffy British ideal.
Despite being the final book in a series, as per the cover, the plot sets up for plenty more. It wraps up a lot of threads though, so it doesn't leave the reader feeling like the story ends in the middle.
In forwarding the plot as much as it does, it also becomes one of the best books in the series. The fanciful prose falters here and there, but the events move at a rapid pace, and Carriger is taking bolder chances with many of the characters, which helps bring them to life and really gives the book a lot more substance and depth. You'll have to read the series to make any sense of the people and events in this one, though.
Four out of five.
Seanan McGuire: Discount Armageddon
Ms. McGuire starts another series alongside her October Day novels. In many ways Discount Armageddon is a really calculated, standard as can be paranormal fantasy / romancey work; Mary Sueish heroine, mysterious and aggravating sexy male, dangerous situations, fantastical creatures in modern day setting and some comedy.
The setting is slightly original; instead of vampires, werewolves and elves, it tends to somewhat more obscure mythos. McGuire liked cleaning out the folk legend cupboard in her Daye series, so this follows suit.
At the end of the day, you pick up this book and you get exactly what you expect; nothing more, nothing less. It's well written, and it kept me reading past sensible hours, but it had little substance and that air of "lets start another franchise" about it.
Three out of five.
Robert Charles Wilson: Spin
I have mixed feelings about the book. First, it's original; the concept is novel, and suitably significant that it leads to examining of society and people when things that we take for granted are taken away. That being said, Spin didn't really go too far into the social repercussions.
The narrative is split; alternating chapters go over past history and current events, and by the end of the book the history has caught up to the first of the current chapters. Occasionally this gets a bit frustrating as the thread has to be put on hold, but I suspect that had the book been a fully linear story it might not have worked quite as well.
Considering the small number of major characters, there should be a lot more room for character development. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. What there is, deals with issues I can identify with, but it isn't particularly salient to the plot. The plot unravels largely unaided; only one of the main characters seems to have a role in guiding the events, and that happens mostly in the background. It's an interesting story, but there's a slight air of MST3K, where the protagonists are mostly provided as company in which to watch the plot.
The writing is competent, and the language is impeccable, although the complexity tends to remain low. Aside from the jumping from past to present, the pacing seemed natural. In the end, though, the book did not keep me from setting it aside and turning off the lights at night.
Three out of five.
John C. Wright: Orphans of Chaos
The writing has a lot of mythology and a multitude of great and wonderful words — but it is too flashy, tries too hard, and the liberal cribbing from physics rubs me the wrong way. Even so, you may wish to check out a sample chapter, as it certainly is quite unlike your average fantasy book of the day.
The characters are interesting, but remained pretty flat aside of the protagonist, and even she wasn't quite as fully fleshed as one might think. The way things get set up, the protagonist has a fantastic amount of power in the plot, but at least in the first installment it remains virtually unused.
Orphans of Chaos ends... not as much on a cliff hanger, as it just ends, and expects you to pick up the next book. That, I have to admit, was rather a let down.
All in all, three out of five. It had the ingredients for greatness, but somehow it just never worked for me. I do want to know what happens to the protagonist, but probably not enough to pick up the next book.
Fushimi Inari Taisha
I had hoped to return to the Fushimi Inari Taisha to take better photos of some of the subshrines and other places I had visited previously, as I felt hadn't properly represented many of them in my pictures. With only a few days left, I spent a fairly relaxed afternoon wandering through the vermilion torii of the mountain loop. The shrine is one of the better known in Kyoto — it's not particularly notable for either spring blossoms or fall colors, but I did manage to find a number of colorful and fruit-bearing trees.
Properly conveying the surroundings, the thoughts, emotions and presence that I enjoy about the mountain shrine eluded me this time as well; and then the sun set and the light was gone.
On the way out, however, I stopped to snap a few more shots of the play of the artificial light through the gates.
Mount Kurama
Just north of Kyoto lies Mount Kurama, known as the birth place of Reiki healing, a fall fire festival, a couple of temples and a hot springs. It's reached through a different line on the same tiny Eizan railway that took me to Mt. Hiei a few days earlier. At the end of the line, there's another funicular leading to a temple, actually operated by the temple rather than the railway company. However, instead of making my way directly to the main village where the Kurama Onsen and temple are located, I hopped off the train a few stations early, walked up the road to another small cluster of restaurants and Kifune shrine known as Kuramakibunecho. It was raining, which was perhaps appropriate since the shrine venerated a water-kami, and the mountain was foggy, but during warmer parts of the year the restaurants have large platforms they set out straddling the small river/rapid that runs down the mountain behind them, and you can dine sitting on the river, watching the water go past. If you want a memorable dining experience in Kyoto, I think this one should be high on your list.
From there, I headed up Kurama mountain; there's a hiking/pilgrimage path that leads through a shrine on the top to Kurama temple on the other side of the mountain.
Once through the temple, I was in the village of Kurama, and headed up the street to the hot springs. The village is pretty, with fairly traditional houses lining the walk. The springs are only half a mile or so from the station, but there's a small shuttle that meets the train. As I was coming from the temple and not following the train schedule, I gladly walked the distance.
To real hot spring enthusiasts Kurama Onsen is likely a disappointment. However, it's one of the few conveniently reached from Kyoto, and the elderly proprietor, while not knowledgeable in English, was effusively friendly. Basic signage and instructions were posted in passable English, and the various package options were listed in a picture menu with English explanations. In short, rather than a luxurious experience of a lifetime, it felt like a very reasonably priced, comfortable and relaxed affair. Having hiked over a small mountain in the rain, and having two weeks of walking behind me, soaking in the hot spring pool watching the fog roll down the mountain sides and above the mix of fall colors and evergreens was quite nice indeed.
Staying in a Buddhist monastery overnight on Koya had been — and still is — on my to-do list. What I hadn't realized was that doing a day trip there from Kyoto was perfectly feasible. With this information in hand, I set out to Osaka and navigated my way to the Nankai train station.
Some of the Internet-derived information was a bit out of date; there were only two "express" trains to Koya from Osaka, and relatively few "local" trains. As I had missed my single early express train, I settled for the next local train, using the opportunity to snack on some delicious pastries from stores at the station. Also, with the experience of some of the smaller Kyoto lines, I had elected to buy a paper ticket in lieu of using my ICOCA proximity card. Turns out, Koya is popular enough that the proximity cards are accepted.
The train ride to Koya started off as a normal commuter rail through Osaka. Eventually the population density dropped and hills appeared. Rather quickly thereafter the train began to slow down and crawl along very narrow, windy tracks, stopping repeatedly in small valleys at tiny stations that consisted mainly of a platform, a small rain cover, and one gate. The express train doesn't go any faster, per se, but it bypasses a good dozen stops.
Eventually the train made it to the Gokurakubashi terminus, from which a cable car continued the journey up the mountain. Once on top, I picked up a map from the station. A bus runs from the cable car station to downtown Koya; as typical, the buses are timed to coincide with the trains. As I was looking at the map for options to hike instead and was a bit taken aback by the suggested daily bus pass fare, I missed the ride. Turns out, you can walk the distance, but on the shoulder of a regular road; I'd recommend springing for the bus instead. Either way, an hour later I was strolling down the topmost part of the traditional pilgrimage route.
The town itself consists of one main road running through it; alongside are residences, some stores, many souvenir / religious supply vendors, temples, and tourism offices. You can rent bicycles (though the town and surrounding temples cover a sufficiently small area that I'd say they're not needed), rent audio guides, and make reservations for overnight stays. A temple stay typically also includes a Buddhist vegetarian meal, but most only accept cash — and so close to the end of my trip, I did not have enough to cover my stay, so I settled for wandering the town for the day.
If you do elect to stay overnight, there are some lookouts and temples within relatively short hikes from the town, so it is easy to spend a few days there.
Eventually I reached the Okunoin temple and the vast cemetery surrounding it. The founder of the Koya settlement, the monk Kukai, has a mausoleum and hall there, and being laid to rest near him has been desirable for many warlords and other important people, resulting in over 200,000 memorials in the woods around the temple. The temple and mausoleum itself are the holiest sites for Japanese Shingon buddhism, and photography is not allowed. However, they're certainly worth a visit, and a look into the lantern hall (Torodo) is especially worthwhile. Hailing back almost a thousand years, it houses thousands, if not tens of thousands of lanterns donated to the temple.
By now, the sun had begun to set, and I wound my way back through the cemetery as evening fell. The weight of over a millennium of memorials and nature make the area quite special.
Especially during the day, the path through the graveyard is actually fairly busy. It's a pilgrimage route, and around the temple there are various facilities for rituals to commemorate your trip. Groups of people in pilgrimage attire and staves, elated to have reached their goal, pass by; groups of pilgrims returning from the temple head the other way. All the gravitas is nicely mixed with people who generally are happy and helpful and eager to give pointers to a foreign tourist.
Once it got properly dark, I caught the bus to the cable car and returned to Osaka. Since the change of stations put me more or less in the middle of Osaka, I detoured a bit to take a picture of some Christmas decorations.
The contrast of hyper-urban Osaka and the timeless spiritual retreat an hour's trek away was a bit startling. But then, that's Japan in a nutshell.
Slideshow is here.
North Kyoto and Mt. Hiei
There were a few sites I had planned to revisit on this trip, namely the cluster of shrines and temples in northern Kyoto. Kitano Tenmangu shrine, Kinkakuji, Ninnaji and Ryoanji are all pretty close to each other, and I had wanted to get some better pictures of Kinkakuji in particular, though the fall colors were reportedly already mostly over on its grounds.
First along the way, Kitano Tenmangu:
The leaf season peak had passed at Kitano Tenmangu as well, but it still had gorgeous Ginko trees in color. Unfortunately the weather decided to be capricious, and the visit set the tone for the rest of the day, splashes of sunlight peppered by rainshowers. I had however dressed for the weather, and was no less bothered by it than most of the locals. It did limit my photography, but not my enjoyment of the walks and the sights.
While walking from Kitano Tenmangu towards Kinkakuji, I took a slight detour, and mostly by accident came upon Hirano shrine. It certainly went on the list of places to visit during the warmer parts of the year, and apparently is in fact well known for its garden — by December, however, it was mostly bare, with the exception of some citrus trees by the main structure.
It was the middle of the week, and the weather was sketchy, so I was hoping Kinkakuji to be fairly deserted. I considered for a while myself whether I wanted to pay the entry fee, since there was no guarantee that the sun would return. I did, found that the grounds were quite busy, to the extent that the photo spot where tripods had been permitted two years ago now banned them. Even so, I took my time among the crowds to sidle along the railing. The waiting paid off; for a moment the clouds parted, and as I started to snap my pictures discovered that there was a picture perfect scene, complete with a heron, to be had.
With that, I enjoyed the rest of my visit on the grounds as my main mission had been accomplished. I picked up some souvenirs, and tasted some of the candied fruits and nuts the small market by the giftshop was selling. As there was still a bit of time left, and my return path took me by Keihan line's northern terminus which was where you'd switch over to Eizan line for Mount Hiei, I decided to see whether there was any hope to make it to the mountain. The previous time or two I had been by the station, the lines had been winding around for such lengths that one glance convinced me to postpone my visit. This time, however, the lines were gone, and with sufficient pointing and gesturing I managed to learn that it was also the last day for a combo ticket for the Eizan line, Eizan cable car, Eizan Gondola Lift, Keihan bus and entry to the Enryakuji temple
on top of the mountain. With the fancy collectible pass in hand, I set out for a whirlwind visit.
Perhaps temple fatigue had set in, or perhaps it was the rainy weather, but I covered the Ryoanji temple grounds with little to show for it. In fact, I much preferred the views and environs outside. On a future visit, I'd skip the bus and try hiking from the gondola station to the temple. Specifically, the tip of Mt. Hiei afforded me a view of the Lake Biwa region, another locale near Kyoto I had not yet managed to visit; while Kyoto was being rained on, the mountains towards Lake Biwa were basking in a pretty evening sun. There was also an amateur radio operator who had set up a nice antenna next to his VW beetle, and was contesting away with abandon against a breathtaking backdrop.
I skipped taking the gondola lift down, and instead calculated that I ought to be able to make it to the last cable car even hiking the distance. The trail was pleasant and quiet — I didn't encounter another soul the whole way. I also came across a random abandoned ski center, a perfect setting for a Japanese zombie movie.
I reached the cable car station just as the sun set over Kyoto, and made my train. Unfortunately the lower cable car terminus was too dark to enjoy at that point; while small, it had seemed like a pretty little village on my way up the mountain. Another wonderfully Japanese touch was the gondola lift portion; young employees with their impeccable white gloves, all lining up and bowing in unison in farewell as the gondola departed the station.
Daigoji
The next day the weather behaved no better, and I dedicated it for a trip to not only visit Daigoji, but actually make the hike to the portion of the temple situated on top of a mountain, Kami-daigoji.
The lower temple grounds were past their color prime, but still very pleasant, and I spent time snapping a few shots and looping through various side paths I had overlooked the last time.
Eventually I headed for the upper part, paid my dues at the small temple at the bottom of the trail, and started climbing.
The trail was semi-developed, and not particularly challenging in any part. It was, however, unrelenting in its grade, and after half an hour I was huffing and puffing as I was hauling my camera bag and being overtaken by old ladies and the occasional fitness enthusiast. The trail followed a mountain creek, and was set deep under foliage, making for dim and quiet.
After an hour or so, I made it to the top, and was greeted by some spectacular views of the mountains surrounding Kyoto.
The views from some of the temple buildings had to be incredible. As they weren't accessible, I settled for the still amazing vistas from the ground, explored a bit, relaxed, cleaned my lenses, ate an energy bar and generally enjoyed the day, imagining what it would be like to sit and meditate on top of the mountain. The idea of dedicating oneself to such life didn't seem at all far fetched in such a spot.
The entrance stairs were lit to a rather nice tunnel effect, and set the atmosphere for the rest of the experience.
Once past the ticket booth, the route through the grounds started with a view of the most iconic of all the buildings in Kodaiji, the small cottage, with its huge traditional round window.
An added bonus was the woodprint exhibit in one of the buildings. That aside, the Kodaiji lighting was a bit more melodramatic than Kiyomizu-dera's, going way overboard in a zen garden complete with a timed light show of two battling dragons... ending in a spotlight illuminating their grand sponsor, American Express. The rest of the grounds, though, were well worth the entry fee and effort to get there. Once past the main buildings, the lighting got a lot more subtle and subdued.
Especially the hill with a few of the older structures was so dimly lit that I had to think that this, again, could never fly in the states. Someone'd trip and sue. Instead, being in Japan, I just took care to go slow, and cheated occasionally with my flashlight. Eventually, having wound through a small bamboo forest and back through the side of the garden, the route ended, as usual, at a shop where you could get souvenirs, religious items or most importantly, some hot green tea.
One of the nice walking tours suggests heading down from Kiyomizudera to the quaint (and souvenir shop and restaurant lined) Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka, notable as one of the areas with a well preserved collection of historic buildings and traditional streetscape. Through there, you can get to the Yasaka shrine and Gion with a short walk, and since I was already halfway down that area, I decided to finish the route and get some shots of Yasaka at night. On the way, I snapped a snap or two of the quieter, but nicer, areas of town.
Near Yasaka there was a restaurant that caught my eye due to its architectural features. The structure was modern, but incorporated a lot of traditional design elements. I wish there was more new construction like this in Japanese cities, rather than the concrete squares that unfortunately seem to be taking over.
Yasaka shrine is centrally located; at the end of Shijo-dori, a major road, and right by Gion, the famous entertainment/Geisha district. This helps to explain why at virtually any time of the day you can find at least some people passing by, many stopping to ring the bells and say their prayers. I had last visited it during cherry blossom season, and it was mobbed due to the adjacent cherry-tree rich Maruyama park. It isn't known as a fall color spot, though, and so it was just a matter of a little patience to get a few shots of the shrine grounds without crowds.
You can find the slideshow of all the pictures in this gallery here.
Yoshida Shrine
On our way back from the Philosopher's Walk that we had done during one of my first days in Kyoto, I had noticed an entrance to a forested area. I had found the same area on the aerial pictures and maps when working on my Wikipedia map project, and my curiosity finally had gotten the best of me. For whatever reason, most maps didn't really give any useful indication as to what this greenery was about. Turns out, it is Yoshida mountain, which is mostly park, with a bunch of biology experiments of the neighboring Kyoto University taking place there, and home of Yoshida shrine.
Despite its age, the shrine is a very modest affair, but one with a wonderfully calm air in the heart of Kyoto, and a great view of the skyline, including one of the Daimonji overlooking the city.
Shinnyo Temple
While admiring the view at Yoshida shrine, I spotted a pagoda next to a brilliant, huge Ginko tree. Down the mountain I went (it was a very small mountain), heading towards the bright yellow beacon, and found myself at the Shinnyo temple.
I spent a good while wandering the grounds and relaxing. The weather of was a bit sketchy, and I took waiting for a break in the clouds as a good excuse to sit down and just enjoy the sights and sounds. Eventually, the sun began to set and I took a bus back to Kyoto station, and switched to one going to Kiyomizu temple, in order to see it lit up for the night.
Kiyomizu-temple Light-Up
Light-ups are common among temples, castles, shrines and gardens. The idea is that you artificially light the grounds, plants and structures for artistic effect. Getting to extend opening hours and charge a second entry fee likely doesn't hurt the popularity of this custom either. One that I had heard of was of the already pretty spectacular Kiyomizu-temple, so I joined the crowd to see for myself. It was obvious from the get-go that the Kiyomizu light-up reputation was well earned.
The side of the mountain where the temple grounds are located were completely lit up, to dramatic effect. Even though most of the leaves had already fallen, the man-made lights made up for it.
Finally, getting around to the mountainside to see the main temple structure, I was greeted with this view of the temple and Kyoto
In short, if you happen to be on Kyoto when the Kiyomizu light-up is taking place it's absolutely worth a visit. Even the nearby souvenir and craft stores as well as restaurants lining the approach paths remained open late for the crowds.
As before, clicking on any of the pictures takes you to the gallery, or you can use the slideshow.
If any of you reading this account can add to my embarrassingly shallow understanding of the religious and spiritual meaning of the various elements in the pictures, please do leave a comment.
Tofukuji
When looking for online blogs, travel guides, and leaf color reports for places to watch the turning of the leaves, there are two spots in Kyoto that inevitably end up on the list. Arashiyama is one, Tofukuji is the other. Since the leaves were reported to be in good season there, and there was a promise of some sun, we set out towards the Tofukuji temple complex.
We had, not accidentally, left the visit to Tofukuji for a Wednesday, to avoid weekend crowds. This was a good call, since it was quite packed even during the week. The crowds were not too much to handle though, and the general atmosphere was fairly laid back, with people politely waiting for others to finish taking their portraits in the good spots, and moving along at a mellow pace.
As to the colors, even on the covered bridge outside the temple grounds it was obvious that Tofukuji's reputation was well earned. The view below is from the bridge, overlooking part of the Tofukuji garden, with part of the temple structure open to tourists — and the tourists — in the background. It's really hard to overstate just how red the Japanese maple can get.
Once on the temple grounds, the brilliance of the maple leaves came to its full force, deep reds and greens and some yellows in every direction the eye could see. The recommended route — and the flow of people — proceeded from the ticket booth along another covered bridge (seen in the background of the first picture) for a spectacular 360 degree view over the garden.
Once over the covered bridge, there was a loop through another hall, zen garden, and a few smaller structures. After that there was a bit of an opening, where people could take a breather from the crowds and reunite with lost party members. Once done resting, a visitor's path continued down through the garden, over a smaller bridge that afforded a rather nice, shady view up through the foliage, and then back up the other side of the river bank.
After climbing back up, there was the final, more open section of the garden with plenty of brilliant foliage cover and good opportunities for some fall color portraits with soft light and back-lit leaves against temple structures — or just pretty pictures in general.
Once back out from the fee-area of the temple and a short stop for some vending machine refreshments, we made a short detour around Japan's oldest temple main gate.
Fushimi Inari Taisha
Since there was still a fair bit of day left, the weather was beautiful and the leaves were turning, we decided to stop at the Fushimi Inari Shrine, known for its kitsune or fox motif, for a brief loop through the lower reaches of the grounds. The full shrine grounds encompass a small mountain, and in fact doing the full torii-lined loop appears to be a fairly common jogging route, with plenty of stairs and grade for training opportunities. Even remaining on the generally low ground still afforded a good escape from the bustle and concrete of urban Kyoto and into more serene surroundings.
The main buildings of the shrine had been spruced up for its 1300 year anniversary, and all the construction that was visible during my spring visit had been completed, with shiny new structures. Perhaps more than any other shrine, the worship halls and gates don't interest me so much at the Fushimi Inari shrine. Instead, the way moss and lichen adorns the older stone statues, and how some of the sub-shrines almost vanish into the deep shadows of the mountain woods keeps pulling me back.
The other draw is finding interesting and occasionally quirky sub-shrines. The first noteworthy one we encountered had a special set of three statues you could buy and add to the skulk.
The other curious shrine had a trio of frogs as the animal guardians. Below is its ablution pool, but the same theme continued throughout.
As before, clicking on any of the pictures takes you to the gallery, or you can use the slideshow.
If any of you reading this account can add to my embarrassingly shallow understanding of the religious and spiritual meaning of the various elements in the pictures, please do leave a comment.
North Kyoto
After the first day, the weather in Kyoto turned dreary and unpredictable, and remained so for the rest of the trip. In one extreme case, within the span of about six hours, I had gone from sunshine to being rained on no less than five times. But that's fall weather in Kyoto, or as the locals say, "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes."
I meandered back to the northern reaches of Kyoto, starting my journey from Shimogamo shrine, nestled in the branch of the Kamo-river near the Demachiyanagi station.
I had not yet acquired a bus map, and instead of trying to guess how to get from there to my other destinations via public transit, I ended up walking along the banks of the Kamo-river to the Kyoto Botanical Garden. The colors had largely already passed there, but I spent a few hours strolling along its grounds nevertheless; just because it wasn't particularly photogenic didn't mean it wasn't beautiful and relaxing.
From the Botanical Garden I continued further up the river to the Kamigamo shrine. There was quite a crowd there, and I was curious if perhaps I had chanced on a celebration or ceremony of some kind. Turns out that the big attraction was a large flea market / craft show, with all kinds of textiles and other creative goods on show, held right outside the shrine gates.
However, the light was already waning, so I left the shopping for later, and headed into the shrine.
While exploring the grounds, I found a small sub-shrine on the way to a very non-assuming back entrance that the locals used, set just high enough on one of the hills bordering Kyoto that it afforded a view above the rooftops.
From the Kamigamo shrine a return to Kyoto station was straightforward thanks to clearly labeled buses — which unfortunately had quite a line, but by then I was done with walking. Whenever moving across Kyoto trains are the first choice, and they are a lot faster. Taking the bus from the Kamigamo terminus to the Kyoto station terminus took about an hour and a half.
Nara
The next day my I headed to Nara with my hostess. The day was not much improved, but it was still a pleasant trip, resulting in this blatant self-portrait.
As the day started to end, we still found time to visit the Kasuga shrine.
As usual, all of the pictures lead to the gallery, and you can also see a slideshow by either clicking on the button labeled "Slideshow" or directly from here.
Along the way, there were a few breaks in the clouds. There are a number of boats on the river; you can rent a row boat, or a trip on a boat that is propelled by a man and a pole, or a much more mundane outboard-engine kind. Either way, they take you up the river from the Moon Crossing Bridge to a secluded spot behind a bend, where they either turn around, feed some ducks, or pull ashore for a brief stop of tea.
I'm guessing this part of the river wasn't always in as natural a state as it currently appears, but the steep hills, dense vegetation and amazingly clear teal-shaded water were breathtaking, and I found myself just sitting on a rock for a while, enjoying the surroundings.
Around this time the river becomes too narrow for the larger tour boats to navigate, and more quiet. Not much further, I finally found the approach up the hill to the Senko-ji / Daihikaku temple that the original sign, and several more along the way, had been drawing me to. There were buildings that appeared to be residences of some sort along the river, but fencing and route of the path kept their mystery intact.
The climb up the mountainside isn't all that long, but soon enough, aside from the signs, the simple nature of the temple becomes obvious in the construction of the railings and shuttered ticket booth. Finally, at the temple, a young monk collected the entry fee. It was in the neighborhood of five hundred yen, but in exchange there's a photocopied package of information about the temple and its sect of buddhism — and the fee includes the right to ring the temple bell three times. A few steps up the hill past the bell shelter is the main temple complex. A recent typhoon had badly damaged the original structure, and compared to the ancient, huge engineering marvels this small outpost in the hills has nothing architectural to offer. Yet, as so often is the case with small temples and shrines, it makes up for its lack of pomp with friendly staff, an amazing view, and an overwhelming air of calm and welcome.
Overall, if you're in the Arashiyama area and tired of chasing the "must see" sights or crowds, I recommend a detour here.
Once done with the temple, I returned to the north shore. A park there afforded some good views of Arashiyama, including the Senko-ji temple I had just visited:
Past the park and the Sagano bamboo forest, there's also Rakushisha, the hermitage of a famous poet Mukai Kyorai. Famous haiku can be found set in stone in the garden, and the 300+ year old house has been preserved in its original state as a museum.
Also in the garden, a traditional deer-scare feeding a purification pool
After Rakushisha, the sun was setting, and I returned to the Sagano forest to take a few night-time pictures, including the Nonomiya shrine:
Eventually, it was time to return to the restaurant-and-shop filled main stretch in Arashiyama, and off to the station for a trip back home.
May you find peace, love and delicious food during the darkest time of the year, and may the brightening days of the spring bring joy and fulfillment into your lives.
I had made careful plans, thanks to my local fixer and other resources, about which places to visit, when, in what order. As usual with these things, the first contact with reality caused me to file away the plan and go with a much more ad-hoc, organic approach. One of the planned items that survived was revisiting the Philosopher's Walk, which I had in the past traversed during the spectacular cherry blossom season.
The Walk is a 30 minute stroll — if one doesn't stop to enjoy the environs, or ancient temples — along a tree-lined canal in the north-eastern corner of Kyoto. It is named after a famous Japanese philosopher, Kitaro Nishida, who used it to commute from his home to his work at Kyoto University.
And so, the first day back in Kyoto, with my head still spinning from jet-lag and 30 hours of travel the night before, I picked up my photo backpack and joined two local expats to walk Kitaro's commute.
This time the route was south-to-north, so we took the Tozai subway line to Keage station, and picked it up at Eikan-dō Zenrin-ji.
The weather was partly cloudy, with the sun every so often teasing us by lighting the bright green Ginko and brilliant red Japanese Maple trees to their full glory, only to dim them again by the time we dug out our cameras.
We stopped briefly at Otoyo Shrine, which is better experienced in the spring and summer, and continued on to Honen-in Temple. The temple was quite busy with the din of other leaf-viewers, and indeed its forested grounds were beautifully colorful and worth the crowds.
With sufficient patience, I managed to capture the temple's well known thatched main gate during a lull in the stream of visitors. While this temple is far smaller than many others, and indeed compared to the multi-story main gate of Eikan-dō the modest gate of Honen-in should not impress, the approach to it, the way it blends in with the surroundings, and just its inherent aesthetic beauty makes it my favorite of the two.
From Honen-in, our leisurely stroll through the crowded path brought us to the best known temple in the area, Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion. There is another temple in northern Kyoto, Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion, which is actually covered in gold leaf. Based on such expectations Ginkaku-ji disappoints, as it is a wooden structure with few adornments. Considering that the pavilion is in the same state it was left around 1480, it nonetheless carries weight aside from its inherent architectural virtues. The famous sand garden and mossy garden certainly add enough to make it worth a visit and explain why it is part of our UNESCO World Heritage.
Part of the path through the garden climbs just enough up the mountainside to elevate the visitor over the temple complex, affording a view of northern Kyoto beyond.
By now, we had spent the better part of the day walking, the light was waning and our soles were getting tender. On the way back to the nearest Keihan train station we passed the park and hill on which Yoshida shrine is built — there wasn't enough time or light to explore it, but I made a note to come back to it. And so, by the time I got back to my temporary home that night, Kyoto had stolen another piece of my heart.
Kim Harrison: Black Magic Sanction
I wasn't a huge fan of the series when I started to read it. It seemed to be pretty run-of-the-mill, as far as the setting went, and the prose and characters had many things that annoyed me and seemed to suggest the pen of an unedited, or badly edited, novice author. Since friends of mine were reading the series, I got to borrow the books for free for the most part, and in order to participate in discussions it behooved me to know what was up.
A few books into the series it started to dawn on me that the annoying, irrational behaviors of the protagonist and some other characters were no accident, but actually had a purpose behind them, and once understood, gave them a whole new level of depth. Slowly, a lot of other layers of the onion have been peeled away, and I found myself pretty well hooked.
Book 8 introduces no major new characters, but rehashes some old ones, getting almost Dr. Who-esque in its way of digging up events from the first few books and explaining just why certain things happened in them. By now, we're pretty well invested with the core characters, and when one of them suffers the loss of a loved one, it matters. As it happens, it's a bit past the anniversary of Kay's passing, so I was in a somewhat emotional state as is, but not only was I in tears, I had to get tissues to make it past a section of the book. Ms. Harrison certainly took a lot of pains to get that part of the story right, and not gloss over the tragedy in a haphazard manner.
Aside from the emotional gravity, I found the book very good. The pacing wasn't perfect, and the level of her prose remains pretty average, but the annoying overuse of some pet words from earlier books is long gone, and the fae profanities are getting not only more imaginative, but more appropriate and offset the seriousness of events quite well. Overall, much like with Seanan McGuire, Ms. Harrison manages to learn and improve along the way, rather than churning out robowritten novels once the series is established. The very start of the book sets up a tension, and there's a constant threat throughout the story, with the protagonist working to deal with it, and making progress. This was a nice change from the usual feeling in modern/urban fantasy where the protagonists just seem to stumble through events, and in the end everything turns all right. The setting, which originally seemed like something from an 80s era shared world project, has gained a lot more depth, and now feels familiar and believable. In many ways, then, this is beginning to be a remarkably mature storyline, without characters who are "good" or "evil" as much as driven by their own motives, which can be harder to judge. A special mention in the series goes to an original portrayal of elves and a remarkably in-depth development of pixies.
If you have the time and willingness to sit through a couple of ho-hum modern fantasy novels, this part of the series might just be worth it.
Four out of five stars.
- Music:Sonata Arctica: My Selene
Tanya Huff: The Fire's Stone
She writes urban fantasy / paranormal romance, with a strong female protagonist and a mysterious and dangerous vampire love interest (Blood and Smoke series). As an aside, her work predates Laurell K. Hamilton, and aside from not being softcore porn, is far better.
She writes slapstick modern fantasy. (Keeper series.)
She writes some very traditional and nice fantasy in the vein of Sharon Shinn's Thirteen Houses series. (Quarter series.)
And, then she writes other things. The Fire's Stone fits somewhere between "other" and "traditional fantasy."
The story is of a thief, a prince, and a princess in a vaguely middle-eastern fantasy setting (there is magic, but no elves). Every one of the characters has some amount of trauma, real or imagined, and a proper amount of teen-angst — to the extent that it's pretty obvious to everyone but the characters that they need to snap out of it. As it happens, events conspire to do just that.
While the setting and plot, by and large, sound like very well tread territory, they're really an excuse to have a properly done tale of people coming to grips with who they are, and overcoming conscious or subconscious fears. Despite the familiar ingredients, Ms. Huff manages to breathe fresh air and a somewhat unusual angle into the resulting dish. The prose is good, though no linguistic masterpiece, the pacing works, and the characters are easy to identify with, and the plot offers just enough twists to only be mostly predictable. Since it kept me up reading, I'll grant it four out of five stars.
- Mood:
thoughtful - Music:Fear of the Dark
Some years back I went to DragonCon and took pictures of people in costumes. Once that was done, spurred on by a friend, I set out to tag the images. One was vaguely cyberpunkish, and made me curious:
Turns out, the charming young lady is depicting a character called "Astrid Blauvelt" from a free audiobook / podcast called The Gearheart. Cool, I figured, and downloaded the bunch, and listened to a few, and let it languish.
On the drive back through Florida, however, the podcasts were on my memory card, so I went ahead and listened to one. And a second. And so forth through the drive.
The plot and writing have plenty of flaws. New characters and events come seemingly out of thin air, and there's plenty of melodrama worthy of a fanfic, and there's plenty of emo. However, I like the readers, and the production is quite good, and for whatever reason I found the series worthwhile (so far I'm on episode 23, so this may yet change.) So, if you think it's something possibly up your alley, check it out. I hope the crew keeps at it, as they clearly have the potential to produce really excellent fiction.
Also, I finished Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light by Tanya Huff. It's a short novel, or long novella, in the urban fantasy genre. It's one of her early works, which shows, but the slightly amateurish and naive tone somehow came across endearing, and I ended up rather liking it as well. It is, much as the Keeper series, worlds apart from her military fiction, but if you like the Keeper books, check this one out as well. The perhaps notable feature is that one of the protagonists is a developmentally challenged person, and it works remarkably well with fairies and ghost about.
Philippa Ballantine: Spectyr
Spectyr is the sequel to Ms. Ballantine's Geist, and is the second book in what's intended to be a series. It's a relatively direct continuation of Geist, both in time, place and characters. I really do like how Ms. Ballantine appears to be doing a series of connected books, each of which stands on its own and starts and concludes its main story. There are a few things that seem to be arcing through the storyline, and she takes no time to explain the setting, and only minimal introductions of some of the returning supporting characters. The main story, however, starts and ends within the book's covers.
For me, the second book in any series tends to be the easiest one for the author, in that the hard work has been done in the first book. I'm only reading the second volume if I liked the first, so off the bat the protagonist and cast of characters are viewed positively; I'm familiar with the world and yearning for more. Yet, there hasn't been enough exploration of the world or characters that boredom would have set in yet. And, indeed, I quite enjoyed Spectyr.
The plot has suspense, and seems far superior to your average fantasy-romance genre, perhaps due to the complexity or way in which personal tensions and issues are interwoven with world-affecting suspense. The element of romance does re-appear, as there's a plenty of romantic tension between two protagonists, aside from the symbolism of the strong female taming the raging beast in the man, but that aside the work is all about the plot and character development, Nalini Singh's advertising slogans notwithstanding.
Four out of five.
Julie Kagawa: Iron King
I believe I picked this up on Amazon's recommendation. It's a teen urban fantasy / paranormal romance genre book, but I've had good luck with some of those before. This time, meh. There's nothing wrong with the book as such, but I just could not get into it, and ended up not finishing it.
The concept is a teen from challenging circumstances, but with an innate worth to the Fae world, getting dragged into the machinations of the fantasy creatures, some her friends, some not so much. So far, then standard fare. The faerie setting is Shakesperian rather than plainly Celtic, which is a bit more original. The prose is competent, the protagonist is reasonably well fleshed out... but it's just missing that spark that makes me want to read, makes me laugh out loud, or generally care about what happens.
Two out of five.
Kennedy Space Center
When Elissa visited last year, we went to see the Kennedy Space Center, and I was told the annual pass would be good to view shuttle launches from the parking lot and Astronaut Hall of Fame, so I picked one up. The rules almost immediately changed to make it ineligible for launch viewing, and there hadn't been other visitors for me to accompany, so I hadn't been back. As the pass was about to expire, I took a half-day off work to pay the center another visit. I had also been sent a flyer about a Star Trek exhibit and some new Sci-Fi themed activities, and I was curious.
The Star Trek exhibit was interesting, but small. It had some special effects miniatures, wardrobe, props etc, but nothing amazing to make it worth a visit on its own.
There was also the advertised Star Trek Live experience, and I dutifully rode the line-ride to get in. Turns out, it is aimed at middle, or maybe high-schoolers; it is a semi-comedy skit on stage, where random audience members get pulled up to perform some task at various points. There is some smoke, some strobes and a way too treble-high and piercingly loud amplified sound system (which was one of my main reasons for leaving, as it was giving me a headache). There's a Star Fleet instructor and a Vulcan with headset mikes, and the idea is a clandestine first-contact scenario, where the Vulcan is hunting a time-traveling Romulan and tries to convince the human with science that she really is an alien. The concept is reasonable, and a woman with pointy ears in a tight Star Trek outfit is always a bonus, but somehow it ended pressing wrong buttons for me. I suspect it's that as you go along making science popular and cool, at some point you cross the line where the presented "science" becomes a cool special effects trick with no discernible educational value, and this production was well past that line. It's also elitist of me to think that everyone knows that Sun is a star and the center of our solar system, but really -- the people who don't already know this are unlikely to attend a semi-educational production at a space center, and the audience ends up bored to tears (or just walking out, as a lot of us did.)
There was also a raffle for an XCor trip to "space" (once they have a vehicle, I suppose), and a bunch of posters and ground paintings contrasting reality with science; for example showing various generations of the Enterprise in scale next to Saturn 5-rockets. Those, generally, I kind of appreciated. The raffle made you run through some half dozen of these to find answers to questions, and while some questions were silly, some were pretty useful and actually educational.
Aside from that, nothing really seems to have changed. It was kind of sad that the shuttle buses still played a video loop talking about the remaining Shuttle launches and the Constellation program. I was still cranky about the way they force you to stand through the same introductory content-poor multimedia shows, when you just want to get to the exhibits (or snack shop.) The gift shop had Shuttle t-shirts and commemorative fridge magnets, but no real collectibles, no parts of the shuttle, nothing real.
Astronaut Hall of Fame
As I was killing time after the KSC visitor center, waiting for potential dinner plans, I squeezed the last drop of value out of my pass and went to see the Astronaut Hall of Fame, which I hadn't been to before. Aside from the Hall of Fame, which only allows US Citizens to be commemorated, the facility actually houses a respectable number of items from the space program, and has a couple of hands-on experiments for the kids. The artifacts are professionally curated, with a good amount of explanatory information. It made me sad, because this forlorn sideshow, to me, was far more relevant and better than the main attraction — much the same way as the "Then & Now" bus tour was far more useful when it was run by retiree volunteers rather than the scripted, dumbed-down version it is now.
So, if you're coming to visit, or want to see space history, I actually rather recommend the Hall of Fame as worthwhile stop. It's air-conditioned, free of hordes of tourists and screaming kids, and even has a gift shop selling the same loot as the main one at the visitor center.
Department Number/Name: 0-3510-000 Information Technology
College/Division: Information Technology
Location of Position/Campus: Tampa
Hiring Salary/Salary Range: $50,000 - $56,000
Duties: This position is in the Network Engineering group for USF's Information Technology Communications (ITC) Department. The position will be responsible for designing, installing, operating, monitoring and improving the server and software infrastructure which is used by ITC for network management and network service delivery. ITC runs approximately 40 servers which provide critical network services such as DNS, RADIUS, and DHCP. These servers also monitor the network services such as outages, gather statistics about how the network is performing, and provide interfaces for the Network Engineering and Operations staff to efficiently perform their duties. USF's network consists of approximately 2,000 switches, 50 routers, 3,000 wireless access points, and a large number of other network devices providing connectivity to 45, 000 students and 10,000 faculty and staff.
Minimum Qualifications (Education & Experience): This position requires a Bachelor's degree in information technology or a related field, with six years of experience in related positions; or a Master's degree in directly related fields with four years of experience. Appropriate college coursework, technical training, or industry certifications may substitute at an equivalent rate for the required experience. Industry certification with directly related experience may be substituted for the degree requirements on a year for year basis.
Preferred Qualifications (Education & Experience): Experience administering large networks with Cisco, Brocade, and Juniper equipment. Solid understanding of TCO/IP (versions 4 and 6). Solid understanding of spanning-tree, routing protocols (OSPF and BGP), access-control lists, multicast routing and control protocols, 802.1q, QoS, MPLS, LACP/Etherchannel, CDPPP/LLDP, 802.11 Wireless, and server load balancing. Thorough knowledge of SNMP v1, v2, and v3. Programming skills in at least these languages: C/C++, perl, php, HTML, javascript. Thorough knowledge of these applications: mysql, apache, ISC dhcp server, mrtg, nagios, RADIUS. Thorough knowledge of Linux (preferably CentOS or RHEL) operating systems. CCNA preferred.
Special Skills/Licenses/Training/Certifications Necessary: Experience building and maintaining CentOS or RHEL systems in a large enterprise environment. Experience monitoring networks consisting of a wide range of different gear (switches, routers, access points, VPN concentrators, firewalls, ext.) Experience developing custom scripts to monitor and configure network gear.
Position Number: 00003382
Posting Number: 0004835
Advertisement Date: 06-17-2011
Additional Information for Applicants: This position requires the successful completion of a criminal background check.
Application Posting Date: 06-17-2011
This is a job in our group. There'll be another one opening soon. The requirements sound scary, but if you're interested at all, and think you're not quite qualified enough, please do me a favor and apply anyway. I'll just say your chances are still pretty darn good.
If you know anyone that might fit the bill, please let them know!
(If you know web and SQL, check out Pediatrics for a pretty sweet developer job.)
2) Discovered that playback on my home theater PC (XP, Nvidia 8800GS on a 50" 720p plasma) has tearing so horrible it's unwatchable.
3) Searched the internets, found tons of threads on this, upgraded video drivers, forced vertical sync on.
4) Tried to find help at Netflix, but there doesn't appear to be any way to report trouble that isn't one of their check boxes.
5) Discovered that there is no vertical sync in Silverlight for XP, so no way to avoid tearing. Netflix won't let you play content on a computer any other way, though.
6) Upgraded to Windows 7, with the hopes that the improved APIs would fix that.
7) Discovered there are no drivers for my sound card, bluetooth adapter, remote, or NIC that will work with Windows 7.
8) Went to see how much a supported NIC and soundcard are, and bought a Sony streaming media box instead, since it was about the same price.
Kim Harrison: For a Few Demons More
Book five in the Rachel Morgan / Hollows series. See any of the previous reviews — you need to be following the series to make any sense out of this book, the protagonist is annoyingly short-sighted, and all the characters and subplots keep getting more detailed and interesting, the writing is between OK and good. Three out of five, though I'm planning to read part six. If only the writing was a bit better, a bit less fanservice, and the protagonist was a bit wiser (more Mary Sue?) the wonderful character development and complex interactions would shine.
Allen Steele: Spindrift
Proper traditional sci-fi with space ships and exploration. There is a previous series of books predating this and setting up the universe, but this one is a stand-alone work with all new characters and timeline. It's written reasonably well, although the characters remain pretty lifeless and the plot is tried and true. Three ouf of five, will read something else from the author if I happen to stumble upon it, but won't seek it out.
Seanan McGuire:A Local Habitation
Book two of the October Daye series. Now, if an author wants to write a book that involves computers and routers and such, they have a hurdle to overcome to get me onboard. It's pretty obvious to me those things aren't Ms. McGuire world. That being said, after my lackluster experience with the first book, I got some comments saying that the series is actually quite good, and this book convinced me, somehow.
It still suffers, a bit, from name-dropping of mythological creatures, though at least here the various beings hang around a bit more, and their presence makes more sense. The whodunnit plot was annoying since it was pretty obvious to me fairly early on what was going on, and the protagonist was clueless until the end, essentially along for the ride and not really able to influence the events around her. I wanted to constantly shake her and tell her something was obvious, or that she's being an idiot for not asking essential questions. Also, it appears the editor never made it to the last chapter, which to me felt amateurish.
Even with all the flaws and annoyances with the book, I really liked it. The protagonist isn't wallowing in self-pity despite everything going wrong, but instead acts like the knight she is. Some of the things and characters that were set up in the first book get built on, and more things get set up. Four out of five, for no obvious reason. Of all these three, this one made me use my Amazon Prime privileges to get the next installment.
I suspect the movie will be of less interest to people who aren't familiar with Japanese culture; at the very least an understanding of the shogunate system and Bushido will be helpful in following the plot.
It's also very dark. I tend to watch movies and read books to entertain myself, and shy away from works that, even if they are good, are emotionally painful or draining. Hence, had I known what this movie was about, I probably would've skipped it. Since I didn't, I ended up with a worthwhile, if a bit heavy, experience instead.
No bones about it, it's a good movie with very strong emotional motives and conflicts. The acting is great and the portrayal of the villain as well as the men caught up in their codes of honor are done brilliantly. It's acclaimed for its long and elaborate fight sequence, although I found it to be a bit excessively long. Then again, one of the central themes was to show how horrible war is, so drowning the viewer in its imagery may have well been on purpose.
If you're looking for a good samurai flick or have interest in the culture, do check it out.
Hannu Rajaniemi: The Quantum Thief
The book was finally released in the U.S. and I finished it last night.
It's good. It's what I suppose can be themed British Science Fiction, which is to say that it's a lot more high-brow and complex than most North American titles; sufficiently little of non-English Science Fiction is translated for me to make comparisons. At times, the genre strikes me as being intentionally obtuse or difficult, and Dr. Rajaniemi's book also suffers from this at times, but not excessively. There are cyber-punk elements and the concept of human consciousness being something that can be uploaded and stored, resulting in the possibility of immortality and artificial bodies. Charles Stross claims on the cover that Dr. Rajaniemi might be better at the genre than he is. I reserve judgment until the final two books in the trilogy, but the first book is more carefully crafted, if not inherently better in other ways. Still, if you like either author, you might wish to try the other one.
One of the flaws of the book is that the first chapter(s) are a bit heavy and difficult, and also confusing. Dr. Rajaniemi doesn't stop to explain things, either the setting or culture, the science, or the science fiction. It dawned on me that it's been a long time since I've read a book where it was helpful to know what a WIMP or quantum dot or beanstalk was, or understand the basics of public-key cryptography — or where the author took no prisoners and assumed it's being read by educated and intelligent audience. I feel flattered.
The Quantum Thief is filled with neat concepts, some original, some not, but almost all very well done. Time as currency, gevulot, the evolution of gamer clans all appealed to me. Most notably, the night and morning after finishing the book I was pondering about the implications and likelihood of the visions presented, which to me means it's working the way Science Fiction should work.
Some aspects of the world fail to feel feasible or real, and much as with Stross' and Bank's works, once the technology level gets sufficiently high, it's difficult to suspend disbelief as to why the problem at hand can't just be solved with more technology.
The plot, once the reader gets a hang of what's going on with the world, is an action-packed caper. It's very well paced, and competently written. Many proper nouns are shamelessly lifted from Finnish, with relevant meanings. There are strong and very dangerous yet vulnerable women, obsession, dark mysteries, vast conspiracies and all that stuff. I have to admit that I may have not managed to follow the plot and the clues perfectly, but the ending seemed a bit hurried, and some of the more momentous final events left me baffled. (How did they escape the second time? What was the point of transferring the bullets to the Atlases? Why did Pellegrine need the thief?)
While it is the first book of a trilogy, it works quite well as a stand-alone story. Many things are left open, and some intentionally opened at the end, but the main storyline and mission is finished — although I expect that in the second volume we may learn that what we thought the point of the first book was may not have been as obvious as it appeared.
Four out of five.
The studio park is built around an active outdoor set, and contains a few soundstages as well. The set is a medieval Japanese town, and the various parts of it — pleasure district, bridge, gate, stables, inn etc. are recycled throughout about two hundred productions each year. In practice, it's very laid back; the film crew and actors set up where they need to, rope off the "block" and assistants with "Silence" fans hush the tourists during takes. Once they're done, they load all the gear on carts, push them to the next location, and set up again.
There is also an indoor component consisting of a museum with various famous actors, producers, directors and writers of Toei movies and assorted paraphernalia. Kids or fans might like the Super Sentai Series hall with various superheroes (and villains) and a couple of interactive mini-rides. The exit is, of course, through the gift shop. Perhaps because it was a rainy day during the week the park was pretty quiet and low key, but I rather enjoyed it. The gift shop actually was the biggest let down. I had been looking forward to picking up some movie poster reproductions or other more obscure loot, but instead it almost exclusively sold standard Kyoto sweets and crafts, Hello Kitty nonsense and utterly kitchy junk, like soap bubble ninja swords.
After the rainy day at the studio, I took an outing during the evening to capture a few rainy Fushimi streetscapes.
With that, it was time to make sure I was packed up. On the 19th I took a short walk around the neighborhood while waiting for my airport shuttle to show up, and was then driven to the airport. Turns out I was the only passenger for that particular loop, so the minibus and ride was pretty comfy. The rain broke and the sun emerged just as we headed to the Kansai airport artificial island. Soon after I had to bid goodbye to Japan and was on the red-eye to Honolulu.
Slideshow and gallery.
I made my way to Sanjo station, and enjoyed the Kamogawa in the morning for a few moments; the statue of Izumo no Okuni near the Minamiza theater was greeting the morning sun rather spectacularly, and Kyotoites were engaging in all kind of morning sports under the cherry blossoms. I then left the river behind and headed east to my original destination.
This northern part of Gion is a lot more quiet than the main roads, although it does get mobbed every so often with tour groups, domestic and foreign. Still, it has locals walking their dogs, and cabbies picking up and dropping off Maiko and perhaps even Geiko from the surrounding houses interspersed by moments of quiet and a local resident making his or her way to the small shrine at the intersection for a prayer.
Eventually the day started to get warmer, the lulls between hordes of tourists got shorter, and I decided to move on. I made my way back to Kyoto station, and to the Umekoji steam locomotive museum. It's nestled among railroad tracks near Kyoto station, but annoyingly difficult to reach. The route I took wound through Umekoji park, a green area much more geared towards ordinary locals and families than the parks tourists usually see. On the way I also encountered a neat bicycle rental place, the Kyoto Cycling Tour Project; aside from the awesome Maiko wheelie logo it was staffed by very personable young people and left quite a good impression. I'll definitely look them up if I ever go back and decide on a bike.
The museum consists of an old station house, quite pretty in its own right, and a maintenance yard with a turntable housing the steam engines. It's actually still somewhat operational, as a few of the bays were not accessible and used to maintain the still running trains used for tourist trips. If you're interested in steam engines, it's a bit of fun, but otherwise it's a good walk from the nearest transportation and can be overrun by unruly children.
After a brief rest and dinner, I headed to Osaka to visit Yodobashi camera, a truly huge multimedia store and by far the largest camera emporium I've ever seen. The main reason for my trip, however, was to catch the Dotonbori area at night and snap a few pictures of its famous neon signs and nightlife.
The fashion was pretty neat, and people definitely were going all out in trying to push boundaries and figure out what worked and what didn't. Aside from the eye-candy and pretty lights, though, the entertainment venues didn't offer me much of interest, and I settled for wandering the streets for a few hours, and headed back to Kyoto to catch some sleep in anticipation of my final full day.
Gallery and slideshow are up, as usual.
I've received almost no feedback beyond "Your pictures are cool," and I'm curious — compared to the photos available in the gallery, am I picking shots that are of interest to you, and is my travelogue satisfying your curiosity, or would you like more or less details? Don't feel afraid to comment or send feedback about what you like and what you don't.
For the 16th, Naoko had managed to book us into not one but two exclusive sites; the Katsura imperial villa and the Koke-Dera moss temple, both located around Arashiyama where she lives.
The imperial villa worked much like the palace: the visit was free, but you had to register ahead of time, and provide passport numbers and other information. The villa, neatly, also had a free English audio guide, where you punched in a number for each stop and it gave you the English version of the Japanese narration the guide was providing. The pace was a lot more relaxed than the palace, with enough time to enjoy the environs.
Much like the palace, the Imperial Villa site, which consists of one large building and some small tea houses and temples, is anything but flashy. It's hard to explain just how serene and intimate some of these sites are; and how carefully constructed the gardens and layout. One of the tea houses has three views out of it, and it was situated such that each view of the garden was completely different, offering representations of different landscapes — a mountainscape, a farming valley etc. Also, the Imperial Household Agency had not only purchased the nearby land which used to be farmland in the past, but also arranged for farmers to cultivate it again so that some other views would be close to those that existed when the villa was being used.
After the villa, we swung by Naoko's house, and walked through a lot of the Arashiyama area, including the famous Sagano bamboo forest. Unfortunately we were in a bit of a hurry — I would have loved to spend more time there because the neighborhood was also historic, but in a much more rustic and rural way than Fushimi or Gion.
In particular, some of the architectural details in the buildings, and the contrast with the nearby bamboo forest would have been worth a visit just for their own sake. There were also some interesting stores with textile and woodwork crafts, as well as a few more religious sites we had to pass.
Once past Arashiyama proper, and the Moon Crossing Bridge, we took a train for a few stops to get closer to Koke-Dera. The cherry blossoms were pretty much done in Arashiyama, but seeing it with fall colors has become one of my goals.
Koke-Dera, or more properly Saihō-ji, is a Buddhist temple famous for its moss garden. To regulate the number of visitors, the entry fee is steep, you must get prior written permission from the temple, and you have to participate in a zazen calligraphy session before you are allowed into the garden.
The garden itself was very subtle; I fear that trying to capture the hues and atmosphere with a camera was a challenge beyond my abilities.
After the day's outing, I took some time to return to the Nijō Castle, which also featured a light-up. Unlike the Toji one, it became quickly obvious that the castle was a lot more popular. There were a few areas where you could set up a tripod, but for the most part you were herded through a one-way only loop. Even so, it was very neat.
The cherry blossoms were still in near full bloom, which made for some spectacular sights on the castle grounds. In addition to the light-up, there were obligatory festival food booths, souvenir booths, and a free concert.
Gallery and slideshow.
One of Kanazawa's claims to fame is that it produces virtually all of the gold leaf used in Japan, and most of this is still manufactured by hand, by pounding gold sheets between paper. The paper is then sold off as blotting paper, apparently all the rage in beauty products. The majority of Kanazawan gold leaf comes from one company, Hakuza, and they have a show room / store in town. It's bit off the beaten path, but the loop bus runs nearby so it's a fairly easy visit. I went there during the week, and the staff was effusively happy to see a foreign tourist. Samples of candies with gold, free tea with gold, a tour of the gold-leaf room with gold-leaf tea ceremony gear...
Aside from that, while it's not huge, the store is great for souvenirs; a lot of the flatware, glassware and decorative items were gorgeous and not as over-the-top golden as the room pictured above. Of course you can also get candy with gold, cakes with gold, gold powder to put in foods, gold-plated golf balls, gold leaf in a jar and so forth.
There was also a brief demonstration on how one works with gold leaf, which is immensely thin by the time it's done. They put a piece of the leaf shown above on my palm, and I had to barely touch it before it disintegrated into my skin and vanished.
Kanazawa has a couple of small neighborhoods that have been preserved well, and have traditional restaurants and bars in a setting similar to historic Kyoto. One was by the river, and of course there were cherry blossoms.
Like any self-respecting city, Kanazawa has a castle. Like in many Japanese cities, the castle is a reconstruction. This one, however, was rebuilt in 2001 and using traditional methods. I had to admit that I'm at awe that a municipality would spend tens of not hundreds of millions to rebuild a castle, but I can certainly see worse use of tax money, and it must have kept many dying construction trades alive. It doesn't make it any less weird that the interior of the castle looks modern, and follows current building codes.
Some of the displays of the construction were translated, but unfortunately not all. The structure of the walls and roof was interesting, but I was completely dumbfounded by the woodworking. Parts of the castle are diamond shaped, with 100 degree and 80 degree angles; these have been reflected in the shapes of internal pillars and all structural elements. The entire thing fits together like a giant 3D jigsaw puzzle, from the humongous structural beams to the smallest detail, everything held together with clever joints rather than nails or bolts. The jointed structure together with its foundation is inherently earthquake-resistant — the construction practices from the Japanese middle ages already were well along with earthquake mitigation, to the extent where modern technology could add relatively little in this structure. Living archaeology at its best.
The castle grounds are pretty nice, and include some actually original buildings, but they're perhaps more notable because of the adjoining Kenroku-en park.
Kanazawa is called the "gateway to the Japanese Alps" and the moniker is accurate. Many vistas in Kanazawa included spectacular views of snow-topped mountains in the distance.
On the way back from Kanazawa, I picked a random seat on the train next an old woman. Turns out, she was likely the only person in the entire car that spoke perfectly passable English, and had spent her life globetrotting something serious. She proceeded to hand draw me several maps of all the places in Kansai and afar I had to go see. This mirrors my previous experience, where it's completely impossible to predict who does and doesn't speak English in Japan.
The next day I headed to Kobe, very easily reached from Osaka via various railway lines — and since Osaka is easily reached from Kyoto, this was very convenient. Unfortunately the day was rainy, to the extent where taking the camera out would've been problematic, so I didn't take too many photos. I did visit Nankinmachi or Chinatown, one of only three officially so designated in Japan.
As befits a Chinatown, the blocks it covers are positively delicious.
I then went to see the waterfront, Kobe Tower and Kobe Maritime Museum as well as the Meriken Pier, a small part of waterfront as it was after the devastating Hanshin-Awaji earthquake of 1995. I have to admit that seeing the destruction, and wandering through the displays and reading just how utterly the city was devastated I could not help but to be reminded of the calamity that was unwinding itself north in the Tohoku region at that very time.
The maritime museum was a bit lacking, mostly consisting of a ton of maritime memorabilia, haphazardly labeled in various languages. There were a few simulators, dioramas and such, almost exclusively in Japanese, as well as a Kawazaki company museum. The physicist in me, however, got a major kick out of seeing an honest to goodness Magnetohydrodynamic ship and drive.
I was also pretty impressed by the Hankyu railway which I took back out of Kobe. The various rail companies in the Kyoto / Osaka area are very punctual anyways, but Hankyu was the first one I saw following the Germanic perfection of moving the trains to an accuracy of seconds.
Gallery and slideshow, as usual, are available.
Similarly mediocre: Thor. The movie was perfectly well produced, but having no clue about the comic, it became pretty obvious that arrogant young son gets banished to learn humility, which he predictably does, and all ends well. There is also plenty of groundwork for sequels, and liberal dose of SHIELD. Perhaps tellingly, I tended to most enjoy the movie when either Kat Dennings / Darcy Lewis or Loki / Tom Hiddleston were on the screen &mdash although Loki was also boringly predictable as far as the character development went. Not worth a movie ticket, but worth seeing as a rental with the geeky crowd.
Oddly, it seems Hikone is perhaps not as popular among foreign tourists as it deserves to be; figuring out the necessary train ticket (although I suspect I could've just used my ICOCA card) required talking to a friendly JR person, and even the semi-express train had no English or Romaji signage or announcements. Luckily, the train mostly stopped at various hot spring sites where all the old people got off, and there are no variations of the name "Hikone" so it's still relatively easy to navigate. I had pretty much figured out the Japanese in the announcements anyhow earlier, so this wasn't too much of a problem, but it was a reminder that not everything caters to the Gaijin.
In Hikone things are straightforward. The station is small, there's a tourist info, and you just follow the main road for a few blocks to the castle. The castle grounds didn't have an immediately obvious main entrance, but most ways of getting in had someone happy to sell you a ticket. You can pay a bit more and get a combo ticket that gets you into an adjacent garden.
The castle grounds are magnificent. There are cherry blossoms everywhere, and you can visit the stables, main gate, the main castle building, plus at least one of the magazines (watch your head and get ready to take off and put on shoes repeatedly.) Tactically the setup is interesting, and in the absence of airlift capability, it would have been very hard indeed to overcome. The main castle building is furthermore amazingly beautiful.
Once inside, though, it becomes obvious that with all the defenses, the remaining space is remarkably small. The stairs inside are extremely steep, so you need both hands free.
The castle is notable for being one of the oldest ones around; it's the original construction from around 1622. Considering that it can withstand an endless stream of tourists shuffling through in their socks, and how great it looks even after centuries of storms and earthquakes, one has to really be amazed at the skill of the builders.
I would suggest visiting during the week, as I can only imagine how busy it becomes during the weekends, especially during cherry blossom season.
Another historical note is the bell that is rung every three hours since way back when.
The town and castle also have their own mascot, the samurai cat Hikonyan who is immensely popular even far outside of Hikone itself.
Also, of course, where there are cherry blossoms and water, there are boats (for boat rides in the moat) and festival food vendors as well as people having picnics under the canopies.
Once I returned to Kyoto, the most convenient route from Kyoto station to Fushimi took me by Toji, and it was one of the "Light-ups" still taking place, so I stopped there — of course without my tripod, so I had to improvise. Light-ups are where a destination such as a temple or castle closes at its usual early time, but then opens again for a few hours as night falls, with spotlights placed to strategically illuminate the cherry blossoms or fall colors. The Toji one was pretty informal, and absolutely outstanding for photographers.
Click on any photo to go to the gallery or here for the slideshow.
Originally the plan I had was to take a bus from the nearest train line to the start of the path, but the buses were so mobbed I decided to follow the crowd and just walk the distance instead.
The first stop along the path was Ginkakuji, Temple of the Silver avilion, one of the many Unesco World Heritage sites in Kyoto. Aside from the pavilion itself and other, newer temple buildings, the grounds feature an expansive zen garden.
Among the features of the garden is a overlook that lets you not only see the temple grounds but also the town beyond.
After Ginkakuji, I headed further south on the Philosopher's Path.
A momentary detour into one of the many smaller temples along the path found smaller scale beauty in its garden.
One further shrine slightly off the beaten path turned out to be wonderfully whimsical. It clearly venerated Inari, but also a pair of mice of some sort, and either the visitors or priests had taken a lot of effort to decorate all the statues with flowers.
Towards the end of the path lie the Eikando temple grounds, complete with its famous and unique Amida Buddha looking over its shoulder. The banners fluttering in the wind, and occasional gongs and chanting were a magical transformation from the crowds just outside of its gates.
After Eikando and a few other temples, I stumbled across a aqueduct. Turns out, it was also a popular (if at times harrowing, as there were no railings and the fall was quite significant) path for the locals, and lead to a water management facility by which there was another park with cherry blossoms, and some old wide rails leading back down into town. After all of this hiking, I still took a moment to stop by Kyoto station, and snap a few night shots.
The slideshow of all the pictures is, as usual, in my gallery
However, since I didn't actually know anyone among the crowd, and shyness intruded once again so I couldn't introduce myself spontaneously to strangers, I mostly roamed the castle grounds instead.
The day was a bit overcast, though it started to clear towards the evening, with a few times that the sun poked out through the ominous clouds. As far as temperature and cherry blossoms, though, it was perfect. I fear there's no way my pictures can capture the spectrum of whites and pinks the blossoms encompass. Just gorgeous.
Once evening fell, the opportunity was there for some dusk and evening shots -- and of course I hadn't brought my tripod, so I had to make do with sticks and stones, but I still captured a few sights of the castle at night.
The slide show of all the pictures, as well as the various sharing links, are available in my gallery, as usual.
After a run around Fushimi, where cherry blossoms were nearing their peak, and a brief stop at Kyoto station and the Kamogawa, I spent the rest of the day exploring the Fushimi-Inari Taisha, one of my favorite spots in Kyoto.
I'm not entirely sure why I like it as much as I do; I'm hoping it's because while it does have plenty of Shinto trappings, it fundamentally is a fairly quiet and pleasant loop around a mountain. Indeed, times I tend to enjoy the most are when I get to quietly enjoy one of the tucked-away sub-shrines and listen to the sounds of nature.
There were a few spots, both on the mountain and near the valley entrance where cherry blossoms were in bloom, but all in all this is one shrine that is not gaining any fame as a cherry blossom viewing location. Instead, it has to settle for being the most important shrine to the most important Shinto deity.
The vermilion gates (torii) lining the paths as well as the myriad of shrines do offer a good contrast between humanity and nature, and humanity's attempt to come to grips with nature.
Once the sun began to set, I returned to Fushimi to wander along the canals and make a quick pass by the Choken-ji temple. All in all, a very pleasant day.
Slideshow of April 7th Pictures.
Another major shrine I hadn't seen on my last visit was the Heian Jingu. As Kyoto was entering prime cherry blossom season, and it together with a nearby canal, were known to be prime viewing spots, it seemed like a good time to go. There's a little bit of a walk involved from the nearest train station, but it takes you past a few museums and the zoo as well, so it's easy to make a full day of the visit. We did, however, skip on the museums and animals. Unfortunately the cherry blossoms in the Heian garden were still budding, but the shrine and garden certainly were impressive and worth a visit.
The little bushes behind the ablution dragon are in fact not cherry blossoms; the white is strips of paper with fortunes on them. (Omikuji) Good fortunes go with the recipient, bad fortunes are left at the shrine for purification.
On the way back we stopped at a random restaurant (Cafe Rose) for a bit of a bite; I opted for yummy udon:
Since we were nearby, we returned to the Kamogawa (duck river) and made a quick dash to yet another so far unexplored shrine, Shimogamo-jinja, one of the many Unesco World Heritage sites and among the older relics in the area.
Also, as we crossed to Kamogawa, it was easy to see that cherry blossoms along its banks were coming along quite nicely, and the blue tarps dotting the landscape with students having snacks and libations under the cherry blossoms while the sun was setting seemed like a perfect way to spend an evening.
I found a nice online guide for understanding Shinto shrines, if you're interested in reading more about them.
In addition the world's first novel, The Tale of Genji, has a significant portion set in Uji, so there are a number of attractions related to it as well.
A further claim to fame Uji has is its green tea; tea merchants and green tea sweets, baked goods, ice cream etc. are plentiful. Unfortunately I know so little about proper Japanese green tea that most of the finer points are lost on me.
After Uji, with some time to spend, we decided to make a detour to Daigo-ji; it was one of the temples I had managed to miss on my last visit, and is also known as a spectacular place to see cherry blossoms.
And indeed, busy despite it being a Monday, Daigo-ji was specially set up with banners and fences for cherry-blossom viewing.
Thanks to Naoko who arranged a lot of neat things, we had tickets to the Miyako Odori dance, complete with "tea ceremony" prior to the performance. The linked article says something about a spectacular 20 geishas dancing in the finale; the 2011 performance had 60! If you're ever in Kyoto during the right time of year, I highly recommend seeing the dance. The music is a bit alien, and while the 600 yen optional program guide does have English summaries of each scene, the context and finer points can still remain a bit murky. However, the performance is just plain pretty, the seats are perfectly comfortable, it only lasts for an hour, and the outfits and production are indescribably gorgeous. If you have a choice of seats (seating is assigned), anywhere near the edges of the floor in the front half is good. Side is better than center, because the stage wraps around and you'll get to be closer to the musicians and the dancers as they enter and exit the main stage.
The tea ceremony was a bit of a conveyor belt affair -- don't expect the real thing. You do, however, get to see a couple of pretty geishas perform tea-related activities, and you get a traditional snack, tea-ceremony style tea (which was quite delicious, actually) and a keepsake dessert plate, so the all-inclusive ticket is still well worth it.
After the performance we passed through the Yasaka-jinja to the Maruyama park behind it to check the status of the cherry blossoms; the park is one of the prime spots in Kyoto for cherry blossom viewing, and while the blossoms weren't in full bloom yet, the various festival food vendors certainly were. From there, we ventured a bit further afield to a small restaurant introduced to me as "Awesomeburger" thanks to its good burgers. After the burger, we headed back to Kiyamachi and Pontochō for some night photography. The two roads are basically parallel and a block apart with a number of suspicious alleys between the two.
Saturday
The first real day of activity was Saturday, April 2nd, and it started with exploring the historic Fushimi district. During my winter visit, the canals were drained, there was little green, and there were no canal boats. This time all of the above had changed, and the cherry blossoms were just begin to bud with a few blooms here and there; boat rides were already popular. The canals are interesting history-wise; they hail back to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's reign in the 1580s. He had them constructed as a solution to the need to transport building materials for construction of the Osaka castle and subsequent reconstruction of Kyoto. The side effect was that they ended up being heavily utilized to transport rice, sake and other things and to this day the major sake breweries in the area are located next to the canals: a major transportation infrastructure project of the middle ages, in other words. The boats used to transport tourists these days may have motors to drive them, electric lanterns and even flotation devices, but in shape and size they are faithful to the originals; indeed the two standard boat sizes still reference the ancient unit of volume koku - there are 10-koku (十石舟) and 30-koku (三十石船) boats. (One koku of rice is enough to feed one person for one year.)
Another nice thing about the canals is that at least in Fushimi they almost universally have a strip of walkway and parkland around their length, so they're a nice green strip through the dense city.
In the afternoon we visited the Ryōan-ji temple and gardens. The temple and gardens were under restoration and closed last time I was in Kyoto, so this was my first time there. The rock garden in the temple is considered to be the world's greatest. Unfortunately by the time I got to Ryōan-ji, the weather was borderline rainy, so I ended up with few pictures to share.
Sunday
On Sunday morning we got to ride one of the 10-koku boats through Fushimi. Turns out that the neighborhood had scheduled a local cherry blossom festival for that day, so a lot of the canals were lined by various booths for games and festival food. After the boat ride, wandering through the festival and sampling some of the treats rounded up things nicely and provided brunch.
In the afternoon, we headed downtown, and wandered around Kiyamachi (a pretty stream-lined street, increasingly taken over by adult entertainment), Nishiki (famous food market since the middle ages) and Teramachi (central covered shopping arcade lined with a number of small temples and shrines), and I got a start on picking up a few souvenirs and keepsakes. By the time we were done with that, and grabbing a snack along the way, the sun was setting, making for a pretty scene along the Kamogawa (Kamo-river.)
As an aside, I follow the convention common amongst expats and guidebooks in Kyoto in not translating things as "Kamo-river" or "Yasaka-shrine," except when necessary; considering the local signage and proper-noun status, it seems to work better.
My initial "expert" estimates were pretty badly off; it was pretty hard to fathom that restoring water (any water) flow to the reactors and pools would take so long. Meanwhile, the plant has been leaking the nasty decay products (Iodine and Caesium) into the environment. Pending more information on who knew what when, the governments actions as far as evacuations go (Here's a timeline -- I'm still trying to find a better one I saw earlier) seemed pretty brisk and reasonable. Had the situation been brought under control, that would still be the case. As it stands, you can tell people to stay indoors for only so long before it becomes patently undoable (running out of food, water etc.) and I do think when it began to look like this will be dragging on, and foreign governments expanded their evacuation zones to 80km and started to evacuate their citizens, the Japanese should have expanded their range and evacuated residents as well. Mind you, they already have hundreds of thousands of other evacuees to deal with. So, a bit of a mixed bag -- pretty solid and rapid initial reaction, not so much after a number of days of this.
I continue to be cranky at media; from what NHK shows of press conferences, plenty of information is being given out, but even NHK gets bored of all the numbers and technical talk, and goes into talking heads in the studio. That being said, things like the fuel pools came seemingly out of left field, and I hope that the US will learn some quick lessons from this.
As far as Q&A, random things I've run across:
Q) Why can't you build nuclear power plants somewhere remote?
A) Because you can't transport power particularly far without losing a significant portion of power into heat and other things along the high-voltage lines. That's what's hindering wind farms and solar power farms too. Maybe, eventually, superconductors change this but for now that's the technological limitation.
Q) Is it bad if spinach glows in the dark?
A) Yes. But this was expected, once we found out that fuel rods have been compromised and decay products are being released. Caesium and Iodine get blown by the wind, and settle on the ground either on their own or aided by rain (snow). Logically, plants (or laundry) in the open end up with this dust of radioactive contamination on them. This wouldn't have been that big of a deal, if it had just been one puff, but it's now been a steady stream for quite a while. I suspect that once someone figures out just how much material has been blown to the Pacific instead of inland, there'll be some pale faces. Anyhow, you throw the produce, milk and meat away. It'll take time to evaluate how much stuff ended up on the ground and what the long-term implications are, but my stock tip of the week is to not invest in agriculture within 50km of the power plants.
Q) Is it bad if tap water glows in the dark?
A) Yes. But if the tap water is surface water (reservoirs, rivers, lakes etc.) it's pretty much expected, as the Caesium/Iodine dust settles. That's rather short-term concern, and frankly, at the levels seen so far, not really that big of a deal. If it's seen in ground water (and I haven't seen any indication that it has yet) it becomes a pretty major problem, since that's probably not going to dilute nearly as much, and it can indicate some really nasty things about core melts / fuel melts at the plant having gotten out of containment (inasmuch as you can even talk about containment with the spent fuel pools in the first place...)
Q) Why are they piddling about with all these pumps and hoses and control rooms, just dump the whole mess in concrete!
A) It took quite a while to build the Chernobyl sarcophagus. It was only built after a bunch of people, many who died in the process, put tons of water and other stuff on the exposed mess to cool it down. And then they discovered that the first attempt wasn't so good, and are (AFAIK) still begging for money to fix it properly and maintain it. So, in short, chances are that in this case rebuilding/repairing a pumping system is faster than entombing the site. More importantly, if you manage to bury the mess, you now have no control over it. It continues to generate heat and melt, may go critical again, and will leech all the nasty stuff into the ground and ground water for a very long time. As far as total radiation released into the environment, I'd wager that fixing the cooling and taking this mess apart in a controlled matter and disposing of it in proper containers will be a lot less damaging. The latest data suggests that a lot of the containment is still solid (which also implies a lot of the nasty stuff came from one or more of the overheating pools instead) and we might as well make use of those containers.
Q) It could never happen here, right?
A) Sure it could, no matter the value of "here." Probably not an earthquake/tsunami, but a station blackout (plant loses all power) that prevents proper cooling of fuel pools or the core is eminently possible with a lot of plants. Not to mention the fuel pools themselves, or all the things nobody had even thought of that could go wrong (the unknown unknowns in Rummy-speak.) That being said, if engineers and regulators are doing due diligence, I'm confident in the ability of engineers to design a plant that's safe for all realistic scenarios. As long as the lessons learned will be applied into rapid corrective action, I'm not really worried.
Q) Radiation in seawater?
A) Yup. And of all the places they can dump the glow-in-the-dark stuff presently the sea is the second best after proper nuclear waste disposal. It's not a good thing, but it's immensely better (for humans, that is) than letting it into the atmosphere, ground water, or the ground. I'd be surprised if the measured quantities further afield are concerning, the current readings were taken right by the plant.
Q: So, what's radiation?
A: It's one of these three:
-An atomic nucleus moving really fast. This is called α-radiation (alpha-radiation)
-An electron (or positron), moving really fast. This is called β-radiation (beta-radiation)
-Electromagnetic radiation (like light, X-rays etc.) This is called γ-radiation (gamma-radiation)
-Neutron radiation, which is a neutron moving really fast (essential for the operation of a nuclear reactor or neutron bomb, but inconsequential here since fission was stopped a week ago and the free neutrons vanished with that.)
Note that γ-radiation is a ray, like light, while α-, β- and neutron radiation are fast moving particles. (Yeah, I know, but I'm trying to generalize here.)
The uranium in a nuclear reactor is turned into various other radioactive substances as it undergoes fission. It's those things other than uranium that are the problem.
The radioactive materials at Fukushima produce all three kinds of radiation. In fact, it's possible that a radioactive atom decays into multiple radioactive atoms and releases one or more kinds of radiation, and then those resulting radioactive atoms decay further producing different kinds of radiation.
Only γ-radiation (γ-rays) travel any significant distance, and only they will penetrate any significant barrier. They're presumably what makes the current power plant site so radioactive and working there so hard, since there's no way to shield the workers against it. However, the effects fall of exponentially with distance, and a really radioactive γ-source a good distance away doesn't really harm you.
While α- and β-radiation can easily be blocked by either a thin layer of metal, or even topmost layer of dead skin cells, those are the ones that are of most concern as far as human health is concerned.
Radioactivity isn't like smoke; you can't take a jar, scoop up radiation from the power plant and take it with you. Instead, the problem is that dust or other small particles of radioactive materials such as Caesium-137 (Cesium-137), Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 that exist in the reactor fuel get spread around and are then ingested or inhaled by humans. When those substances enter the body, they get very close to various organs and the electrons and nuclei they emit wreak havoc with DNA (and other molecules). In that sense, contamination by radioactive materials is not different from an industrial release of mercury or dioxins, just the mechanism of toxicity in the body is different.
All three substances behave differently, as far as their propensity to flow with the wind, rain down, dissolve in water etc, so once they're released into the environment things become really complicated.
Iodine is easy to defend against by policing meat and milk from grazing animals, washing produce, and taking non-radioactive iodine products to prevent the absorption of the radioactive variety. Its half-life is about 8 days, so in a few months most of it will have decayed into harmless stable Xenon, some γ and β. As long as it does its decaying outside of the body, it's pretty much harmless. In the body it concentrates in the thyroid, and if it does its decaying there, there's an elevated risk of thyroid cancer. Most of the statistically inferred deaths from the Chernobyl accident were thyroid cancers in children, and could have been largely prevented by safe iodine and government control for of the food supply for a few months after the accident.
Caesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years, so it'll remain dangerous for hundreds of years. It's the primary reason the area surrounding the Chernobyl reactor is uninhabitable, and will be the reason why the Fukushima site and its environs will be uninhabitable (though, so far, at a far lesser scale than Chernobyl.) It spreads in the body into all kinds of tissue, and hangs around in nature, and concentrates along the food chain. Reindeer, salmon etc. end up with significant Caesium contamination. The decay is a bit more complicated, Wikipedia goes into more detail.
Strontium-90 is dangerous because it accumulates in bone, where it damages the bone marrow and causes leukemia and other cancers. More details in Wikipedia.
The effect on a human body, then, depends on what the radioactive substance is, and whether it has been introduced into the body. The weather and precautionary measures will dramatically change those factors.
To further complicate matters, effect of each of these three kinds of radiation are different. While γ-rays go through all kinds of shielding, they are far less damaging to the human body than α- or β-radiation that has been introduced inside the body.
There are all kinds of units being bandied around in the news. The one that you should watch for is the Sievert (Sv). It tries to take some of these variables into account to be an accurate measure of the effect of radiation on the human body, so a dose of one Sievert of one kind of radiation should be as harmful as one Sievert of radiation from another kind. Usual SI prefixes apply, so usually we're talking about μSv (micro-Sieverts) or mSv (milliSieverts = 1000 micro-Sieverts = 0.001 Sieverts).
Exposure also isn't linear. A first responder dosed with 100 mSv in a minute will have different effect from a civilian who gets 100 mSv over the period of a month, but aside from very short exposures this shouldn't come into play too much.
Note that Sv measures total dose. It's like a unit of distance. When you want to talk about how dangerous or radioactive a location is, you use the rate, Sv/time, for example Sv/hour (Sv/h), much as you would use miles/h to indicate speed. You may know it's 735 km from Tampa to Atlanta, and that's the distance you have to cover, but you need speed (80 km/h) to get an indication how fast you get there.
Similarly, when radiation readings are being bandied about, if the population gets a small dose of a relatively high rate of radiation it sounds dramatic, but is no worse (and often better) than a much, much smaller rate of radiation that contaminates the area and subjects the population to a higher dose over a longer period of time.
Fundamentally, considering the information coming from the various sources, count your Sieverts and mind your SI prefixes. Typical background is 2.4 mSv/year, but radiation workers, first responders etc. can get up to around 50 mSv/year under normal working conditions, and may go into doses in the low hundreds of mSv under emergency conditions. (Obviously, if you respond to an emergency and get 100 mSv in one shift, you'll be doing desk duty away from radiation for the rest of the year.) All sources I've read suggest that even doses of a few hundred mSv do not produce statistically significant increases in cancer rates, above that you're talking about things like increasing your risk of cancer from 40% to 41%.
(1986) Valeri Legasov, Deputy Director, Atomic Power Institute, in regards to the Chernobyl accident.
The site itself is pretty badly contaminated, but by reports workers can still go there in short shifts and not exceed their work safety limits. Why those are still being so strictly enforced (as well as visa requirements preventing the Chernobyl team from arriving, per one report) shows that Japan didn't entirely learn its lessons from Kobe, as far as the power of rote bureaucracy. There has been talk about temporarily changing exposure limits to match international recommendations to allow the workers to get more work done, but haven't heard more of that. Sucks to be there, either way, and the workers are in a fair bit of danger even if they try to follow the rules.
Winds and atmospheric conditions now matter. What goes where in what quantities depends on what gets disturbed, and this is not only entirely uncharted territory short of Chernobyl (which isn't comparable in several technical ways), it also gets into sciences I'm not so well versed in. Finnish radiation protection authorities have started to suggest that based on the IAEA back-channel info and technical data they've got the on-the-ground leadership is incompetent, but expects that even if the bungling continues, outside of the exclusion zone the effects should not be dangerous.
Contrary to some reports, NHK reports that work on the site continues, at least in shifts, and a water cannon has been brought in to get water into some of the buildings from a distance. I'm also hoping that the outside experts start to sort this situation out.
Reuters live blog has locals from Tokyo and nearby reporting that they have food in their local stores, and life goes on, despite the reports of shortages in the news.
The proper way of knowing how badly you should panic comes from the radiation readings in the surrounding areas. Even when the levels peaked to seriously unhealthy (but not immediately lethal) levels at the plant yesterday during the fire, the surrouding areas haven't reported anything panic-worthy.
It's hard to say not to worry. Of course there has now been a release of radioactive material that is well beyond anything that should have been possible, so that's worrisome. It'll be hard to know that things won't get worse, or what the effect nearby are as far as contamination sticking around or getting into the foodchain or water supply and concentrating. But so far the levels really aren't enough to be harmful; we're talking equivalent to living around more naturally radioactive soil or working as a flight attendant. I'd leave the immediate neighborhood of the plant, but more than a hundred miles away I'd stay put and would keep an eye on the TV without losing sleep.
Reports of radiation that is 50 times the normal sound panic-inducing, but they really aren't. We're talking about minute levels. Remember that this is measuring accurately very low levels of radiation. What really matters is the total exposure that ends up happening, and the elevated levels nearby reported so far aren't enough to cause concern. The anti-fallout instructions to not bring laundry in from the outside, to brush off when coming inside etc. are panic inducing, but based on all the data so far they are a case of "better safe than sorry."
There's something rotten in TEPCO. I hate to put more fuel to the fire as far as "Authority is lying" but running out of water, running out of fuel on pumps, nuclear fuel storage tanks running so dry that they catch fire from decay heat, inability to prevent hydrogen explosions in the reactor buildings... The cascade of failures is sounding increasingly hard to comprehend. Bad leadership, woefully inadequate training, badly botched desgin, cultural inability to admit problems and seek help before the get out of hand, angered Fate... There'll be room for hundreds of books of failures coming out of this. Hearing that someone other than TEPCO is beginning to oversee the situation or take charge would be welcome right about now. The upside is that it's hard to think of anything else they can possibly screw up worse anymore.
In contrast, based on the readings from the local governments and TEPCO, the government isn't doing a particularly good job at keeping people informed with enough information, but the measures they've taken and information they've given have all made sense to me. The content of their communication has been remarkably reasonable, the delivery sucks.
NHK World is also doing a good job, and has been my main source of info. They have talking heads, but the speculation is limited. On the other hand, major US news organizations completely ignore official press conferences, instead concentrating on Anderson Cooper measuring the depth of debris piles and having talking heads speculate on twelve-hour-old information. Eventually Reuters and AP report on the conferences and press releases, and THEN CNN suddenly reports breaking news. Right after these messages. Complete with some total misunderstandings by the anchor, who apparently did not pass high-school physics.
Nothing new from reactors 1 & 3. 2 also seems stable-ish, though either the reactor vessel, containment vessel, or both are likely damaged. How badly, we don't know. Either TEPCO doesn't know, since they have to rely on damaged instrumentation to figure out the condition of the plant, or they don't want to fess up.
Reactor 4 (just like 5 and 6) was somewhere between in cold shutdown and empty. Based on everything I've gathered, the reactor vessels or containment for 4-6 are just fine. What happened was a fire at a spent nuclear fuel pool at reactor 4, and not surprisingly that's the cause of the major release of radiation yesterday. This will lead to a lot of questions, and it's frankly a failure that's very hard to comprehend. Fundamentally, an uncovered pool packed tightly enough with spent fuel to generate enough heat for a fire is not very different from an uncovered reactor core. A lot of the shorter-lived isotopes will have decayed, so fuel in the spent rods isn't as bad as the fuel in the reactor, but it's mighty bad either way.
The wonderful fresh food at Japanese convenience stores apparently isn't so good during emergencies. When transportation networks fail, the constant fresh deliveries stop too.
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