Kurama fire festival this evening.

We took a short train ride out to Kurama, where we saw the yearly fire festival.  Townspeople parade up and down the streets carrying huge flaming torches... a wild event.  Difficult to photograph with a phone camera...

Gion Matsuri festival after lunch

A parade showing traditional costumes of Kyoto-area people over the centuries.  Not very exciting but interesting enough.

This short message was sent from my phone.

Japanese gardens this morning...

Very nice, I would like to have something like that.

A wide variety of soybean products at this store.

Kyoto is famous for pickled vegetables...

Here's a store selling a wide variety, with the usual sampling containers for tasting.

Brown rice

We found a wonderful Japanese health-food restaurant today, "Bio-tei", and had a delicious lunch... with 100% whole-grain brown rice!  All the other rice here (and there has been a lot) has been zero-nutrition polished white rice, odd for a culture which is health concious in many other ways.  The rest of the meal was also great... spicy curry, salad with pumpkin and apple, yogurt with fruit.  And tea... all for 1050 yen, a great deal.

Last night we were out late in the Gion district...

Lots of shopping, restaurants, and bars.  It was odd to see the malls swarming with people at 9pm, including hundreds of pre-teen kids... on a Monday night?  We had a drink at the very funky A-Bar.

Kyoto!

So on to Kyoto.  We've been here two nights now and have seen a lot of temples and shrines, as well as some Zen gardens...

Extravagant architecture is everywhere in Japan.

Really makes most North American cities look boring and blocky in comparasion.

In Nagoya we discovered that the Robot Museum had been closed for two years...

Strike one against the Rough Guide.  So Tourist Information sent us to the local electronics bazaar, which has a robotics section.

We took a very fast train to Nagoya...

... home of Toyota.

Plans for the next few days

Tomorrow we're doing a day trip to Hakuba, two hours north of Matsumoto, where we'll do some more hiking in a different part of the Japanese Alps.

The next day we're travelling to Kyoto, with a stop in Nagoya to visit the Robot Museum, and any other sights we can squeeze into a three hour layover.  Maybe just lunch.

Then Kyoto for 5 nights or so...

Snacks!

Dried octopus and squid.  We eat something weird every day...  often we don't know what it is when we start, and sometimes we still don't know after we're done.

Eating noodles...

You're supposed to slurp.  Can't help it really.

A local food specialty

We had this last night... eel steamed in rice in bamboo leaves.  Quite good.  Apparently was a favorite of the Imperial family.

Vending machines...

... are ubiquitous, selling a variety of teas, canned coffee, hot and cold drinks, and various beers.  Some restaurants are even set up so you order and pay outside from a vending machine, which then spits out tickets that you take inside and give to the waitress...

Japanese toilets...

... are awfully complicated.

Matsumoto Castle

We are in Matsumoto now, after some awesome hiking up in the Japanese Alps.  Unfortunately all those pictures are on our good cameras, and we have no way to get them onto the blog right now.

So you will have to settle for the few pictures I have on my phone.  This is Matsumoto Castle, which was our first stop this morning...

Hiking in the Japanese Alps

We are relaxing after a 3 day hike in the Japanese Alps. It was a
spectacular hike both in beauty and technically. We are sore even 2
days later. It was sunny which allowed us to see up close the jagged
peaks. Photos to come...

Today we went to a wasabi farm, which need running water to grow, so
imagine a "field" in a seriously modified river. We tried the wasabi
ice cream which tasted more like plain vanilla. We also had eel for
dinner, our most expensive meal yet.

Off to the Japanese Alps

This is our last night in Tokyo. We have seen a little of everything,
the upscale shops, the trendy action center at night, Kabuki theater,
history of Tokyo Museum, grocery stores, various resturants, and of
course the subway. We didn''t see any gardens as it was either raining
or they were closed. Once because they are closed one day a week, the
day we went and another time because of the typhoon, it was sunny when
we got there but they probably had a lot of downed branches.

Tomorrow we go to the Japanse Alps for 3 days of hiking and staying in
mountain huts. Then 4 days of easy hiking and touring around. Sorry
again no pictures.

Pictures

Here's a few pictures, only ones I took with my phone so not many.  The train station and some plastic food, resturants use these everywhere to show what kind of food they sell. 

Google Tokyo

We are at Google Tokyo and Torrey is about to give his talk. Security
is pretty tight for the building. They let me come in though, and it
looks much like Google in Kirkland.

As for the typhoon, it passed by and it has been hot and sunny since about 11am.

typhoon Melor

A typhoon is hitting tokyo today. It has been raining hard and windy,
but currently is sunny. No one at the hotel seems too worried,
including the staff.

typhoon Melor

A typhoon is hitting tokyo today. It has been raining hard and windy,
but currently is sunny. No one at the hotel seems too worried,
including the staff.

First day in Tokyo

We're here and off to a busy start...  Last night we arrived at the hotel around 6, found a quick bite to eat and crashed by 8pm.  Felt like 4am our time...

This morning I woke up at 2 but didn't get Claire up until 4:30 :-)  we were soon off to the morning fish market at Tsujiki, where we saw all the wholesalers with tonnes of every kind of fish...  lots of huge frozen tuna being cut up with bandsaws.  Lots of cool pictures there, but not on this phone sorry...

We had a good fish breakfast before 8... a big sashimi bowl for me and a broiled whole fish in teriyaki sauce for Claire.

Then off on the monorail over the Rainbow Bridge to Odabai, where we visited the bird sanctuary, nature park, and aquarium.

We headed back into Ginza for a very good but late east indian lunch and then shopped the Ginza district (didn't buy) until rush hour.  Finally back to our hotel with a final stop along the way for a good dinner from the local department store...  I need to write a lot more about food shopping here, its interesting but I'm too tired now.  And two-thumb typing on my phone is too slow.

Anyway, a great but very long day on our feet for over 12 hours.  Our hotel has an Onsen (Japanese hot baths) which we're planning to try tonight.

And then to bed, and hope that the jet lag fades and I can sleep in tomorrow!

Claire in the Vancouver airport with the 2010 Olympic mascots, Sumi and Quatchi