We made it back from our family’s Japan Adventure! We had an amazing time, saw a lot of beautiful things and had a lot of fun exploring. We also had a bit of rain, a LOT of heat, and had varied responses to the local Japanese food. Fun!

There is no way I can put together our whole trip for this blog. I plan on developing a separate page for the Japan Adventure, somewhat like the one about Antarctica. Today I am going to put a representative sample of pretty scenes, our wonderful family, and anything else I think is interesting!

We stayed in a traditional Japanese inn for our first couple of days in Kyoto. Shoji (paper paneled) doors, tatami floors, and beds made on the floor. During the day the beds are folded up and put in special closets. Just down the street was this beautiful river, with boats, bridges and gorgeous sunsets.

Those aren’t posters on the wall on the right. The windows opened onto a gorgeous private garden!

The room also came with Yukatas, which they said we could wear outside while touring or to breakfast. (A Yukata is like a less formal, lighter, unisex Kimono.) We didn’t have the nerve to wear them outside, but we all wore them to breakfast! And what an elegant traditional (Vegetarian) Japanese breakfast it was! (Not to say that everyone enjoyed all of it…)

We did a hike in the morning to a monkey preserve, high up the mountainside which provided a great view of lots of monkeys and the city of Kyoto. There is only one species of monkey in Japan, so these are the same type of monkey we’ve seen pictures of in the northern island of Hokkaido, sitting in hot springs while snow piled up on their heads.

Later we visited a shrine… I had always believed that folks would write prayers on little papers and tie them to wires at the shrine. Our guide told us that many places you can buy a prediction of your future, and if you don’t like what it says, you tie it up and the priest burns them periodically.

Here’s a second breakfast in our Yukatas.

The Senbon Torii shrine has over 1,000 Torii gates. They are very tightly packed, and some are very old. It is a great honor (and expense) to sponsor a Torii gate, and when one ages out, a new one is placed. Some are over a century old.

In addition to the Torii tunnels, there are lots of little Torii decorating family shrines all through the grounds.

This pagoda marks the approach to my favorite Japanese shrine – Kiyomizu-dera. Founded in 778, it is well over 1,200 years old. I’m sure lots of renovations have been made, but the architecture is amazing.

The most impressive part is this huge platform, built out over a cliff.

Below the impressive deck structure is a fountain, with water pouring out in little streams. Long handled dippers are used to catch some of the water, which is supposed to give you good luck if you drink it. Seems like lots of places here have little rituals that promise good fortune.

Below left is a very famous Japanese artwork. I saw a satire of it, with Godzilla added, in a little shop. What fun!

Another Japanese style meal. You might notice all are not enthused! (Just for the record, we pretty much tried for one more American style meal every day. Lots of French Fries were consumed.)

Ginkakuji is known as the Silver Pavilion, and it is surrounded by exquisite gardens. It was built in 1482, after the Gold Pavilion. It was styled after the Gold Pavilion, but had no gold or silver. It was given the name Silver Pavilion in deference to the Gold one, and it is said the moonlight glinting off the polished black lacquer it used to have, gave an appearance of silver. Whatever, the grounds are fantastic.

Here’s the Gold Pavilion. Kinkaku-ji was built around 1399. Covered in real gold leaf, it was a very impressive structure. In 1950, it was burned down by a mentally ill monk. Detailed plans of the building were preserved, and it was rebuilt to be exactly as original, in 1955.

Here’s a vegetarian tempura meal. This was probably my favorite of the local style meals. The dry leaf is placed over a small flame, and it probably adds some important flavor to the veggies boiling inside of it. The foil kept it from burning up, but it did get a bit singed. Very interesting!

As I mentioned, we didn’t always eat Japanese style. This dinner was at a pancake place! It’s actually a Hawaiian restaurant chain that our kids have visited before, so the name caught their eye. Great fun, with an absolute ridiculous amount of whipped cream on some of them!

Our last couple of nights in Kyoto we stayed at a more contemporary inn. Still mattresses on a tatami floor, but here we had a little kitchen, actual couches, and even a bread maker. They provided packaged flour and yeast, and instructions on how to set the bread maker to deliver fresh bread in time for breakfast. We had fun with that!

On our way to Osaka, we spent a while in Nara. Famed for having litterally hundreds of dear roaming around, Nara was Japan’s first capital city.

We visited Todai-ji, home to the largest Buddha.

One of Buddha’s students misbehaved badly, and was banished outside of the temple. His statue, dressed in crimson, still attracts attention.

Osaka is where I met Cherryl the first time, exactly 50 years ago. When we had time off our teaching English and Bible classes, we spent some of it at the fabulous Ōsaka-jō. This huge castle is surrounded by a moat. The moat walls are made with huge stones, so expertly cut and placed I think they rival the work of the Incas in Machu Picchu.

The castle has been renovated several times, the most recent being in 1997, since Cherryl and I were living in Osaka. It looks far fancier now! I don’t remember any gold trim!

Preparations were being made for an upcoming festival, and we were told the colorful flags in the shot below had to do with that.

A very somber memorial is the Peace Park in Hiroshima. When the Atomic Bomb exploded about 2,000 feet over the city of Hiroshima, this building was directly underneath. Oddly enough, while the metal dome melted away, the building was pretty much left standing, while every other structure for a great distance away was leveled. It has been preserved just as it was – an icon of the terror of atomic weapons. The museum is sobering. In addition to wiping out the entire city, with over 100,000 people, the radioactivity, which wasn’t understood then, caused burns and cancers and probably took as many people as died in the bomb’s detonation. It is very hard to look at all the pictures and artifacts on display. I felt 50 years ago, and still now, that everyone in the world should see this place and get a real feeling about the awful power of the weapons World governments threaten each other with. Sigh.

A video dramatization of the Atomic Bomb blast, projected over a map of the city, gave some perspective of the scale of the damage. My copy of the video isn’t the best, but may still be interesting.

A young girl, Sadako Sasaki, survived the blast but developed leukemia. She heard of a Japanese legend that if you fold 1,000 Origami paper cranes, you would be healed. She reportedly folded over 1,400 before she passed away – at age 12. Her classmates folded cranes in her honor, and raised money for a monument. Since then, Origami cranes from all over the world are sent to this monument.

On that sad note, I will end this little narrative.

One last shot, our great family trying to survive the 11 hour flight from Tokyo to Chicago. Including the early morning flight to Tokyo, the flight to Chicago, the flight to Omaha and all the layovers, the trip took well over 24 hours. We’re pretty much all back on normal body clock hours, but it took a while!