Big in Japan

on the way there’s everywhere rice….

me on the way

My family came and we had some very nice and intense time. It was so much fun to go here and there, taking the shinkansen every day, relaxing at hoshi onsen, hamamatsu beach, 21st century museum kanazawa, kyoto two times, eating good dinner and of course going to karaoke with leonie :-)

find it :-)

i think my family had a big cultural shock in tokyo. same like i had. same like everybody has i think. now they are in the plane back to austria and on one hand i wish i would be with them on the other hand i am worried to have only 3 weeks left here…

so we went to kyoto a second time to see the golden palace. a group of junior high school girls caught me to make an interview with me. if i would have know how much fun it was i would have definitley shot a movie of the situation. i give you one example: hello- break – what is – break looking at the sheet – your – break looking at the sheet – name? and it went on like that. they really got into detail. name/ country/ do i like japan/ why i am in japan and in the end they gave me a form that i should fill out. name, country, peace message…. hääääää???? well i only have the pictures…. it was fun.

and i also saw the golden palace, met some kapitäne and my family there….

then to a place where i have already been before. hardcore biginjapan users already know the name and story of this place

and to this place where the built a 4km path of these orange gates. really crazy, but beautifully built into the forest.

i dont really know what to write about kyoto. i can just say it is a great city. it has many different facades. urbanism. japanese craziness. hang out areas. geishas. contemporary art. and very old japanese temples shrines and gardens. all in all an amazing city. but because of that also crowded. i am also a bit tired of writing because right now i am in the shinkansen to ogaki writing all the stories from last week in a row. now i realize how much time all this blogging takes. today i already spent like 4 hours on it without publishing. i am writing textfiles because no internet in shinkansen – actually unbelievable that they do not offer in shinkansen. how do they survive without… well they have their mobile phones.

so back to kyoto. the only way to enter the imperial palace is with a tour. we didnt know that its a 150 people tour. well this is no fun if you have guards that are telling you to keep close to the group if you want to see something in detail.

the gardeners are really poor guys. they have to climb up the trees and cut the new leaves. its not leave but i dont have a dictionary with me right now, anyway you should know what i mean. it’s the thing that grows in a tree. that makes it bigger and bigger every year. well and the gardeners have to cut them – so that the shape is not changing. because actually all the trees there have the abstract shape of a man with opened up hands to get some holy spirit.

the palace is nice, but i am not sure if i would do it again. probably not. there are lots of other very beautiful things to see in kyoto. afterwards we went to the silver palace which is being renovated right now so you cant see much. actually we wanted to go to the golden palace. but the difference between golden and silver is just G and K – so very easy to mix up on the map. and we found out there that the silver facade was just an idea and has never been realized. so it is not silver it is just called like that. is that japanese humour? anyway it has a very nice garden which is also worth a visit.

then we were hungry and went to the gion district. lonely planet writes here is the most beautiful street of asia. well i dont know. i think they got a really good service from the many geishas located in this area. we saw one as well but we were more interested in food…

kanazawa is not close to ogaki but definetly worth a visit, if you wanna see some nice architecture for some very nice japanese garden.

this is the 21st century museum from sanaa.

this floral wall is lovely.

it is full of different rooms. this one is for example open. impossible to describe the feeling sitting there. you have to be there. one of the best spaces i have ever been. its actually very simple. four walls – all the same as below and the ceiling has a big hole to the open air. well somehow everything is very well calculated. it seems that you only hear sounds that are coming exactly from above. somehow you are capsulated in the middle of the city but you have no ceiling so somehow also not capsulated because you can hear the sounds of birds flying above the roof and feel the open space. so you dont really know where you are – with very simple methods. bravo – i love it.

a second installation that was really cool and simple was that one. a swimming pool. actually it is just a ceiling made of glass with a little bit water on it. so it seems you are standing infront of a swimming pool. but as people are entering the room below and you can see they are not wet and walking in normal way, things change. or actually it doesn’t. only your picture in the head changes. very interesting. nice interactions from insiders and outsiders of the pool are happening.

hamamatsu is in the north of nagoya 2 hours from ogaki and it has one of the biggest beaches of japan – indeed it has and it’s very nice. turtles come here to put their eggs. so later in the year there should be some thousands of little hero turtle babies…. how sweet. so leonie and i we went there to see a nice beach.

we left at this busstation. actually the street was very high frequented and there is no way left, right or back and no traffic light or a zebrastreifen. even to look to the left is problematic because of the plants….

finally we did it and we found the beach…. but where is the ocean belonging to the beach?

it takes some time to cross the sandy hills to get to the ocean. its the most fun when you reach the sea and in the same moment it starts to rain heavily, because then the way to some shelter is really far….. always look on the bright side of life ….

says more than 1000 pictures

bus from nagoya to tokyo is half price but double time. there is one leaving at 11pm and arriving 5am, which is convenient if you can sleep. actually everybody said oh it might be to narrow for you. but it wasnt. it was quite comfy ;-) because there were only like 10 people inside the bus.

sleeping in the bus…

unfortunately it took a while that i could sleep. i had to peeeeeeeeeeeeee…. we made a stop at 1 am and i found this nice toilette with a flower set up :-) how sweet.