Day 9: Get around round round.

Well, just like they said, our bags arrived from Kyoto, no big deal. So I open them up, unpacked the Yukata I bought in Kyoto and put mine on. Oh, they are so cumfy for lounging around and doing some casual blogging.

I must have a party where I serve Sake to everyone and I get to where my Yukata.

(I think I will but more of them, but on line from the US where they are probably cheaper and easier to transport)(we are running out of souvenir space).

First full day on our own. We are pretty much spending the day just being people that walk around Tokyo. When we were in our first hotel in Tokyo (oh, ages ago) we were close to a Metro line, so we used the subway. That is good for getting to and from the center of Tokyo. But now we are real close to a JR train line. This line goes around the outskirts of the Metro Area.

So, to start off our cultural adventure, Daniel has selected two unusual museums for us to visit. The first is a classic Japanese Art museum that is near Shibuya. The second is the samurai sword museum, which claims to have over 10,000 swords in their collection.

So, JR Yamanote line Train to the stop after Shibuya. (Future self, please check these station names form me. I am having a beer. And it is really day 10 and my neck hurts). It seems like you can get off at just about any stop on the JR line (except where our hotel is) and find huge buildings and interesting things.

On this one, we walk down the street to find our little museum. But it turns out it doesn't open for another 20 minutes. Cool, we continue on to the main street. On the way we pass a bride in her lovely white western style wedding dress having her picture taken with her handsome groom. Why they were having their picture taken down that funny back alley, I will never know. But on down the streets. We end up in this alley that Daniel says is “Teenager Town” which is a district which specializes in clothes and fun things for teenagers. Lots of uniformed schools kids in safety groups going down the street (narrow street, no cars). Lots of places selling standard teenage clothes gear, but also a number of shops selling anime and manga dress up costumes.

Strange thing here, there were a number of large black men acting as shills out in front of some of these stores. I think they were selling women's clothing. But they were rather intimidating and certainly didn't entice me to step in there. Daniel thinks they were going for the city gangsta image, but they had strong either jamaican or african accents.

This is the location where I started to realize that there was a very definite clothing style to the young ladies who were going for the ultra-sexy, long leg, pseudo school girl/Anime look. It is:

1. Peach and shear.
2. Very short peach shear skirt.
3. Even shorter peach shorts under the dress.
4. Similar setup with the blouse.
5. Some sort of hair lightening going on (redish).
6. Very high heals. (usually cork).
7. No, I wasn't really paying that much attention.

Oh, yeah. The museum that Daniel wanted to see. Instead of the usual collection of ancient and beautiful japanese art prints, they had a special showing of pictures of cats. Ancient Japanese art prints of Cats. But still Cats. We had to take our our shoes to see them. Not sure that Cats merit that sort of special attention. The thing that we discovered about this old art style is that you have to pay attention to different things than you would with western art. With Western art, I think you are drawn to the faces of the people, and perhaps the flowers. With Japanese art, the faces are not so important nor very accurate. And things like the hands and feet seem more representative than real. But the amazing and exact thing was the detail on the Clothing. The patterns and colors and texture and folds on the Komona's we pretty amazing. I wish I could have taken some pictures, but it was verboten. Much of the art shown was also some parody of some other famous work. Probably would have been funnier if I knew the other work. But I am sure it would be something like take a famous the picture of Washington Crossing the Delaware and making everyone be a cat.

Art by D. Powell. Title: Cat Wars. Thanks Dan !!

For Lunch we stumbled into a Nepalese retuarant. We had the best Curry and Nan ever. And we made an important discovery. In Japan, the Chinese restaurants are run by Japanese. The Italian restaurants are run by Japanese. The MacDonalds are run by Japanese. So all of these restaurants are basically bad japanese restaurants. HOWEVER, the Nepali restaurants are run by Nepali guys. They have what I have to think is very genuine Napali food. AND, (from my exhaustive sample size of 2 restaurants), all Nepali people speak fluent english. (The guy we talked to also spoke good Pakistani, Indian, Japanese, and strangely enough, Nepali).

After lunch we too a “short cut” through Yoyogi Park through the Meji Shrine on our way to find the samurai sword museum. Yoyogi park was big and green and had some very old trees. We saw a Japanese Raccoon.

THis little guy was just wondering around the tourists

Emperor Meji is the guy that took power back from the Shogun's and brought Japan into the modern world. He is very well thought of here in Japan. I believe he is the guy that the is depicted in the movie “The last Samurai”, which I now have a uncontrollable urge to watch. And then, perhaps a Tom Cruise marathon.

I am sort of figuring out the whole Shinto Shrine thing. They are all very similar (like catholic churches are similar). You enter through the Tori Gat. Then you have a structure with a spring and water to rinse your hands. The you enter a large fenced in area that has the “sanctuary” which is open on the long side for people to pray. Everything has those big japanese roofs.

 

The Samurai sword museum is down a bunch of little streets and very hard to find. We did find another Nepali restaurant area. Then, just when we thought we were lost. This little merchant comes out of his shop and says, “Are you looking for the Samurai Sword Museum? Wait a second, I have a map for you”. It was only 5 minutes from there.

The main thing I have to say about this museum was that it was free. Actually, it was OK. It just wasn't what we were expecting. First, it was all modern works. And by that, I mean swords that had been made in the ancient style but finished in the last year. There were only about 40 swords (where are the other 9,960 swords at?) and they were displayed as only the metal. We were sort of thinking that we would see the hilts and sheaves and things like that. But no, this museum is really dedicated to the Sword masters and the swords themselves. We did begin to find out the difference between a Katana and a Tachi.

We were tired by now but we were a long way from the train, so we hiked on into Shinjuku. Such big pretty buildings.

 

We stopped for a nice coffee 

This police guy looks cool. But not very scary.

 

I saw a Yamaha household appliances showroom and we walked in. They had the neatest high tech bathrooms and Kitchens. All sorts of things that had been done to make use of small space. Except for the bathroom. These guys take their bathrooms very seriously. The "bath" consists of a hose shower, a cleaning area, and a soaking tub. The entire area is water proof so you can wash up soap up and just rinse the entire room clean. I WANT ONE !!!.

Cool Japanese Bath. The entire room is drainable.
You wash on the side where Dan is and then you soak in the big tub.
This picture is from the "4th Wall" POV

Finally we jumped on the train back to our hotel. Have I told you how the trains and subways work here, as far as payment goes? You put money on a ticket when you enter the station. That ticket gets fed into an auto-gate. It opens the door, lets you through, and gives you the ticket back. When you get to your destination, you feed your ticket into an identical gate on the way out. If you have more money left on the ticket, it gives it back to you. If it is empty, it keeps it. If there is not enough money on the ticket, lights flash, sirens blare, a detention cage drops from the ceiling to surround you, and 5 young women in tight leather outfits appear from underground elavating platforms and proceed to poke you with electric shock wands. Curiously I have been short 10 yen for 3 trips in a row now.

But I digress.

On this trip a rather elagant and classic looking older japanese woman sat down next to me on the train. I immediately was getting body language like I was in here space. Like I was poking her. It was my camera pouch on my belt. She shifted as if I was bothering her so I moved the camera around and said “Go men desai” (excuse me). She said, “Oh, don't worry about it”. Talk about a shocker. A minute later I said to Dan, look there is the red ball building. The elgant woman smiled and me and said, “That is a driving school. It is named “rising sun” and so the red ball”. Then it was our stop. I thanked her for the conversation. What a nice country this is. Or perhaps people are just good.

By the way, We saw this driving school this morning. I forgot to mention it. Here is a picture. And a map link cause this thing is pretty cool. However, the only place I can figure out that you can view this place correctly from is the train. Strange.

Wow, The Laundry Machines in Hotel add their own soap! Everything runs on an exact schedule in Japan, even the laundry machines. And they sound so cool when they spin up and down. It is like starwars clothes cleaning.

Drying doesn't work so well, however. I think you are only supposed to wash like a shirt and underwear and some socks at a time. 

Day 8: On our own again

Day 8: On our own again. So nice to be back on our own again.

Here I am back on a train. This time we are on the Shinkansen, going at 300KPH headed for Tokyo. I hope. I mean, I know we are on the right train. I think. Everyone smiled and nodded. Our seats are facing in the way we are moving, that is a good sign, right?

We had a relaxing morning and then started several different journeys. First: We sent our bags ahead to our Tokyo hotel. This is how you do things in Japan. Every hotel has a special service area, you take your bags there (make sure and bring a japanese text address for your next hotel) and poof! Your bags are gone and will show up there sometime tomorrow. You don't have to carry them or worry about them or try to find a place for them on the Shinkansen. We have reserved seats, box lunches, power outlets to recharge our laptops (should they need that, but being Macbooks, they will probably be fine for the 3 hour trip into Tokyo). And, I just found out that the station that I thought the Shinkansen goes into is NOT the one it actually goes into. Instead of just having to ride the commuter train for 4 stops to our hotel, we are going to have to ride it 1 stop. Almost not worth bothering with the train, huh? (news flash from the future, it was 3 stops)

As a special side trip, and to try and satisfy Daniel's need for Tori Gates, we took the local JR train a couple of stations to the Anari Shrine. The shrine of 1000 tori gates. What a cool place. At first we thought we had made a mistake and were at the wrong place. Because we only saw like 6 Tori Gates (but they were huge and orange). There were also a lot of shinto shrines and prayer areas. Everything very old and with that classic Japanese roofing style. Lots of fox carvings. Going to have to look up what that is all about sometime when we have Internet connection.

 

Once we had looked around the main area, we followed a large side path up the hill, and there we found it. The Infinite Corridor of Tori Gates. I made you a Movie !!

After viewing this movie many hours later I just have to say, I was so focused on the Tori that I had NO IDEA that that young women was walking just in front of me. Really. Honestly. Trust me on this one.

Or if you are boring you can see some stills.

 

I am pretty sure that the pretty girl in the previous photos took this shot.
I said "Dozo"

See the Wishes?

Here is the idea, as far as we can tell, you have a prayer you want answered? You buy a tori gate, write your name and prayer on the tori gate, and erect it for your ancestors to see and take action on. The bigger the gate, the more likely your wish will be answered. And, of course, the bigger the gate the more it cost to put up. You want a 10 meter Tori Gate? That is a few hundred million yen. We forgot to take a picture of the sign that had the prices. I will look it up on the internet <Note to future self, look up tori gate prices>.

Daniel bought a small one for 800 yen, but that was just as a souvenir.

We also ran into a guy that was sell (what I assume were) used Yakata (a light cotton Komona). While Daniel was trying on one, an elderly woman in a beautiful Komona came up to us, smiled, and said “He looks very good in that. I look the look of it on him.” Surprised the socks right off of me, let me tell you. Then she engaged the merchant in polite conversation and everyone was happy. I bought the Yakata and everyone bowed to everyone and we were all very happy. What a pleasant experience. If I had been on the ball, I would have asked for a picture of this nice old lady with Daniel in his Yakata.

OK, back here in realtime, the Conductor just took my ticket and said “thanks so much”, so we are definitely on the right train. Woo Hoo !!

I think I will have a beer.

The shinkansen is very pleasant. I had time to write a short story and read some of Vernor Vinge's new book and then we were gliding in to Tokyo. We made the transfer to the JR. I was thinking that we would need a new ticket to pay for our trip on the local Tokyo line, but it turns out that our Shinkansen ticket was good for any transfers in the Tokyo District. How cool is that? Imagine something like that working in the US. Imagine taking the high speed transit from LA to SF (that would be the airplane), getting of the airplane and stepping right onto Bart and never needing to get a new ticket.

Think through what we did. We walked up to a ticket booth at 12:50 and asked for two tickets to the next city over. The guy did some button pushing and asked us which train we wanted. The 1:06 or the 1:16. I asked for the 1:16 because I wasn't sure how to find the track and wanted time to screw up. He took my credit card (call it $300 for 2) and we walked out, through an automated gate (it takes your ticket in, says “OK” and gives you your ticket back) and (since the ticket agent had told me “platform Eleven”) we were right up onto the platform. We were at our car entrance point at like 12:58. Time to get a bento box and a beer. Which we did. In fact, we had to wait for the 1:06 to leave (don't want to get on the wrong train). And then we were off.

So, we travel from Kyoto to Tokyo, we have no reservations, we have LOTS of leg room, and we have power we can plug our computers into. And it cost us $150. And that includes transit to our hotel via local city transport. Oh, and we arrive at each destination within 1 minute of scheduled arrival time. (unless there is a massive earthquake, then within 2 minutes).

Our Hotel in our new digs (for the next 5 nights) is the Princess Garden Hotel, in Meguru. It isn't as nice as some of the places we have been, but it would certainly compare well to any Holiday Inn in the US, so we will do just fine. (though, a Holiday Inn in the US would have a pool. They don't seem to have swimming pools in Japan. In fact, I think they consider swimming to be a special ability. Like typing used to be. (but I could be wrong about that).

Oh. We are now going to play Star Craft for a while.

(we must be number 1)

Day 7: Nothings quite as pretty, as Kyoto in the morning.

Day 7: Kyoto

Quick Impressions: Holy shit look at those women! Are those really skirts? Nice Tori in front of that shrine. Thighs. Look at the roof on that sucker !! I have to take my shoes off Again? How do they go from school girl uniforms to this in just a couple of years. I have never seen so many people reading at the same time in my life. Sushi Go Round !! Kirin !!

We did the Kyoto Morning Tour today. All of these tours have a common element: Tight Schedule. However, the incredible niceness of the tour personal, the really futuristic bus, and the general can do attitude of everyone along the way (the guards, the ticket sellers, the people that make sure you take your shoes off and put them into the rack labeled 17 (not 18 for christs sake, 17)) makes everything must fine. If only the people who are on the tour could keep a schedule as well as the people running the tour then everything would be great.

We ran into our friends from the 3 day tour, the young Italian couple (he of the boy scout knots) from Chicago and they chatted us up again. Our first stop was a budhist temple. Since Kyoto was the Capital of japan for a few centuries, it accumulated a lot of religious centers and shrines. We went to the East Budhist temple. There is a West one just a couple of blocks away. Same sect and all, just needed more space and more big roofs. These temples consist of a massive tatami mat area (like, maybe, half the size of a football field) that faces a shrine. 3 kneeling prayers to a mat. There were two halls like that. This budhist sect was very popular because it was the first one that said that a normal person, without doing years of hard living and training, could go to heaven. Oh yeah, and monks could marry. So you can go to heaven even with a little nookie. No wonder they are so popular and powerful.

I think this one protects from Fire.

This is the oldest relic in the place

Next we visited the Shogun's house. Now, the Shogun didn't actually live in the Capitol (at that time). He lived at his place in Edo (now Tokyo). But he kept a big place in the capital so he could impress and manipulate the Emperor's minions. Because, you see, the Emperor had no real power, but he was still number 1 in the hierarchy. In fact, “Capitol” in Japanese means “Where the Emperor lives”.

The Shogun, however, was a real piece of work. His entire life seems to be built around making sure that no one kills him. What a wimp. He did have nice garden though. His garden is all rocks and bridges. Very Martial.

Oh, and one of his paranoid countermeasure contraptions was sort of cool. The floor around his Dojo was constructed with special metal devices that would squeak when people walked on them. So you couldn't sneak up on the Shogun. Well, unless you were a Ninja. Or a Sniper with a 50mm night scope.

This metal fixture and the shape of the boards above makes the sentry squeak noise.
Of course, the Ninja would be crawling under the porch, like me.

 

Last stop was the Golden Pavilion. I think it is gold leaf, but who can know?

This was done with super digital zoom and hand held.
I am pretty happy with my new camera.

In the afternoon, Dan and I took the subway a few stops out to Dan's new love, the Kyoto International Manga Museum. I had my doubts about this place and was mainly going for Dan, but it turned out to be pretty cool. First impression, there were people sitting down and reading just EVERYWHERE. Spilling outside onto the large astroturf yard. Sitting in all of the alcoves. Men and Women of all ages. Everyone reading Manga. What a remarkable thing. You must pick a Manga from the shelves inside (there are thousands and thousands of Manga), and you take it somewhere, and you read it. I tried one, but they read left to right and it was hard going.

Manga Museum Readers on the grass.

 And, they had a very cool special exhibit whose theme was “Young Sexy Girls in Uniform with Swords and Japan”.

Can I post some pictures without copyright infringement? Well, at least a link: oh my.

For dinner I got Daniel to go to a Sushi Go Round with me. You know, this is the place where there is a conveyor belt that goes around the restaurant carrying plates of sushi. You just grab what plate you want as it goes by. Dan wasn't psyched by this and we almost left, but then I sighted like 3 vegetarian plates in a row, and once I grabbed them, he got into the swing of things and we had great fun. By the way, they figure out your bill by counting the plates and the color of the plate. My math was only off by ¥14,000 !! (where is the Yen symbol? ¥, I went back and inserted it, using time travel)

One last thing,

Kyoto has by far the highest concentration of beautiful young women in short skirts that I have ever seen. Perhaps I need to get out and about in Portland more and do a quality check and thigh count. However, I believe myself to be correct at this time. And the clothes they wear are almost stylistically identical. These are not the school girls, they are in their sailor uniforms. And these roam in packs. Perhaps there is some hunting activity going on here. And the young men, in my opinion, just don't measure up to this level of prep work. Not by a long shot. In fact, I am surprised that I haven't been accosted and drug off into sexual slavery by now. I will have to be more careful in the future, now that I am alerted to the problem.

Day 6: I want to buy a little pot

Day 6: The Samurai, The Kiln, and the Castle.

I am sitting here in the lobby of the Kanazawa Niko waiting for my 2:00 train. I am watching a troop of samurai in full battle regalia marching back and forth. They are under the flower banner of the lord Kanazawa. They appear to be lost. They had best get their act together because the festival parade starts in just a short time and they aren't going to be happy if they miss it.

Banzai !!

We are going to miss it, however. Our train will be leaving just before the parade starts. We will have to enjoy the show as we hurry past it while they queue up to start.

We had a busy morning of it. We went to the city of Kazama Castle and Garden. Very old. The garden is judged as one of the 3 most beautiful gardens in Japan (which presumably means, third most beautiful gardens in the whole fraking universe). Let me give you an idea about how old and planned this garden is: There is one tree that was pointed out to us:

Results of the Mound Method (and like 300 years)

That has it's roots exposed. This is not by accident. This is called the “Mound” technique. The tree is planted in a mound of dirt. It is planted as a sapling. When it gets big, the mound is dug away to leave the root exposed . So imagine planting this. You have to go to your gardener and say, “Hey, make me a mound and plant a tree. In 200 years, go dig the dirt off. Jon will like it”. 

We also saw examples of the mound technique still in progress. Probably only 100 years on that one. Just another century or so to go. 

They also had the nations oldest fountain.

It is like 300 years old. It is powered by gravity as it is feed by (presumably air tight) pipes from the upper pond. I wonder how hard it is to make pressurized piping from …... bamboo?

Lots of other things to see. I will try and just put a couple of pictures in this for you.

A famous japanese poet (which if there is a god in the heavens, I will go look up his name and put it here instead of this parenthetical remark) who visited the gardens and wrote this Haiku. It was carved into stone and put in the garden.

The stone is there on the left.

 It reads:

Aka aka to


Hiwa tsure naku mo


Aki no kazu

which roughly translates as:

“How brightly the sun shines, turning its back to the autumn wind

I have translated this Haiku in to a more traditional English Form:

Here is the sunning shining so brightly

That I don't want to think of it lightly

While The wind is so cold

it makes me feel old,

But is ignored by the sun, and quite rightly.

I asked Daniel what he thought of this garden compared to the formal gardens we have visited in Charleston South Carolina. He said that the ones in Charleston were much more planned. Much more geometric. These here were more wild and random. Then we agreed that these were just as planned but had the appearance of being wild and random. Surely someone thought about that a lot.

 

 

 

One of the things that I find intriguing about Japan is their curious and insistent use of Uniform in pratically all working situations. We have already touched on the school girl (and boy) uniforms. You also see it in the police, safety officers, and fireman (like we do in the US, but the japanese are much more..... uniform.... about it. To some extent, however, these uniforms extend into everyday life. Here is a good example, these guys are the gardeners. This is typical gardener uniform. I remember seeing guys dressed like this in Sasebo when I lived there in 1970. This is a similar outfit that people (especially older people) wear to work in their gardens or the rice fields.

Look at the hose on that guy.

Next we crossed over the highway to visit the old Castle. I guess that after the Shogun period (called the Edo Period) they entered the reform period. During this time the Emperor had overthrown the Shogun but I take it that the peace was not easy. The order was given to tear down all of the traditional samurai lord castles. So there are only pieces remaining here and there. Pretty cool pieces. At this place, they have recently (1990?) done a complete re-creation of the traditional castle gate. So there is an old one and a new one. In a 1000 years, they will both be old ones. We could go inside and explore the new one.

 

 

 

Our next stop was one of medieval high tech and art. We went to a local potter shop. The master potter there (a young man) gave us a tour. It was a saturday so there were no workers there. Normally he would have 3 teams of workers. Potters (working the wheel), Painters, and Kiln workers. He explained each steps of the process to us. I found it fascinating as there were a number of physical and chemical issues that make complete sense to me in hindsight but I would not have predicted them a forehand. First they shape the clay on the wheel. This area of Japan is renowned for its clay material. That material is found as a hard rock, which is ground to a powder and made into clay. After the (say pot) is formed, they let it dry for a few days. If it doesn't dry completely it will explode when it is first put into the fire (“very dangerous” says the master (he spoke good english)). I am thinking of the poor girl on animal house that was killed in a tragic kiln accident. She was making me a pot.

Anyway, After it is fired once, it is covered in a special powder and fired again. Now it is smooth and shiny. It is also 18% smaller than it was. It shrinks in the fire process. Speaking of that, this place had two kilns. They were made of some kind of rock (kiln rock?) and were maybe 12x6x4 (feet). They are heated with electricity but also use wood logs (“The electricity for the heat, the wood for the color”, ays the master). After being fired they have to be allowed to cool. For 4-5 days. We had one kiln that was closed and hot, it had been fired yesterday. It had a digital readout that said 818 C. If they were to open the kiln before it had cooled, the pots would crack.

Temperature Shrinkage

Colors Change with fire

Last they are painted. You put on a layer of paint, and then you fire again. The fire process drastically changes the color of the ink (like from yellow to blue,etc). If you have a multi color bowl, you fire and paint for each color.

Then he sat down cross legged at a wheel and threw us a couple of pots. It was fascinating. He could easily have been making that movie “Ghost”. Where is the crew from “Community” when you need them?

So he spends like 5 minutes making a beautiful pot. He sets it aside. Then he says, “at this stage it is very soft” and he bends the lip over destroying the pot. A few people gasped in horror. He laughed a little. Then he made us a sake flask. Wow. Good thing I have pictures to explain all of this to us.

 

 

This guy is the 5^th generation master working at this shop. Behind him on the wall was a picture of his grandfather (Great?) throwing a pot for a bunch of school kids in uniform. One of those kids was the crown prince. The Japanese think much of their crown prince.

In the end, he said it takes around 2 weeks to make a single pot. (of course, they make then in large batches, handmade but essentially identical. They have little sticks they use to measure dimensions. He said, “if the if pot throwers make a pot a little too big the painters get Very mad”.

After seeing all of that, I just had to have something to take with me. Luckily he had a wide range of things you could by. I passed on the $32,000 vase and got a couple of tea cups for like around $70. This is what a call a first class souvenir. It comes with a story. I dated a girl like that once. (the other end joke I had was even worse, so don't complain).

Right now I am on a high speed computer train (not the shinkansen, but maybe 100mph) going from Kanazawa to Kyoto. I just want to say: I love my Macbook Air. Oooh, a shinto shrine !!

Back on the tour, our next stop was an old and partially perserved Saumarai neighborhood. This is where 3^rd and 4^th class samurai lords and soldiers lived when they weren't out making B movies. We saw some more lovely gardens and I was once again amazed at all of the water flowing through the city in well controlled little rivers. I don't know if this is the wet season or what. I guess it must be, but it certainly hasn't rained on us yet.

 

 

 

 

 

When we arrived from the tour back at our Hotel (to pick up our baggage prior to the train ride, which I now realize you know I am on, so I can't make that very suspenseful. Hmmm. Perhaps I was run over by a float or something.... Anyway, there was a major street parade and carnival gearing up to start. Daniel and I saw a LOT of samurai soldiers, traditional firemen (with their ladders and special ceiling pulling down tools)(Perhaps they were a Ninja assault team in special holiday colors). Anyway, hundreds of people in Kimono, Happy Coat, Armour, and other fun things. We didn't get to see much of them, but it was still amusing. The Samurai were especially friendly. They let the pretty girls touch their swords.

 We got to the station and and lined up on the platform under the sign that said "Car 8" and our train name. The train showed up 10 minutes before departure, but it ended before where we were saying (see below). Our guide (in the blue there) said, "don't worry, the other half of the train will get here in a couple of minutes". And it did. See the nice uniformed young japanese girl guiding in the oncoming train section.

More Women In Uniform !!

And now we are on the train. Perhaps I will watch the rice fields go by some more. Hopefully I can post this from our hotel in Kyoto.