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Okay, I’m super lazy about updating my blog, and I don’t know why. So here’s a short update with links to the photo section.

KYOTO (Pictures)
Went to Kyoto again, it’s still beautiful. Hit up Sanjusangendo (1001 Buddhas Temple), Kiyomizudera, Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji, Fushimi Inari, the Philosopher’s Path…

We (Lauren, my guest, and I) also went to the “tea town” and “home of the Tale of Genji,” Uji. Walked around there for a bit and also bought some tea.

The hotel was pretty nice, and the entire trip was fairly inexpensive. I still haven’t had the opportunity to see Kinkakuji (the Golden Pavilion) in the sunshine, although it’s still beautiful in the rain.

HAKONE (Pictures)
After we got back to Tokyo, we chilled around, went to some St. Patrick’s Day parties, and then on Sunday headed out to Hakone. Hakone is a National Park that is super-beautiful, and you can buy a three-day pass that lets one ride all the transportation in the area.

We got on the train early, and then headed out to Hakone, where we checked into the ryokan at which we were staying (a ryokan is a traditional japanese inn), called “Kappa Tengoku.” Although it was a little run down, it was comfortable, and it had an onsen, which is lovely.

Odakyu Co. owns a lot of the transportation out there, and they decided to go a little crazy. So from the train station, we took an “old-fashioned” train, complete with switchbacks, up to the Hakone Open-Air Museum, which has all sorts of sculpture that is just sitting outside. It’s the largest of it’s kind in the world. From there, we walked through a park and looked at plants as well as eating udon for lunch.

To get places from the top of the “old fashioned railway,” one takes a cable car to the top cable car station, and then you take a high-speed gondola to Owakunadai, or the “Hell Mountain.” This is a mountain where there are large sulfur deposits which are constantly releasing sulfur into the air, and upon which you can eat black eggs, boiled in the hot water of the springs on the mountain, and they give you seven years of good luck.

From there, we went back down the mountain, and all of a sudden decided to run to the base of the lake to take pictures of Mt. Fuji, which was completely clear and very pretty. We then went back to the ryokan, ate some food, hopped in the onsen, and went to bed.

The next day, we woke up, took another dip in the onsen, and headed to the Old Hakone Checkpoint, a museum structured at the point where people had to check through on their way to Tokyo. The next stop, on the way to the pirate ships that carry visitors to the base of the belching mountain, was a walk through the “Hakone Detached Palace Garden” and the Old Cedar Highway (filled with lots of really tall cedar trees planted long ago. Passing by the pirate ship for a moment, we proceded to the Hakone Shrine, and then climbed the stairs up, looked around, and then hopped on back down to the pirate ship and sailed across Lake Ashi.

From there, we got some soba and hopped on the other side of the gondola, going back up to Owakunadai, where we were able to see Mt. Fuji very clearly - a very nice thing. It’s very beautiful, and I got some very nice pictures. We headed from there to another onsen, bathed, and then got on the train back to Tokyo.

MIURA-FUJI and SAKURA MASURI (Pictures)

In early April, Taro-san (a neighbor from home’s cousin) invited me out with his family to do “traditional Japanese activities.” Namely, strawberry picking, bamboo shoot hunting, and BBQ. The next day he invited me to ohanami, otherwise known as a cherry blossom viewing party (although most of the viewing is of the food and drink.

On the first day, my friend Dai joined me, and it was a lot like being a small kid again…we were the big kids. There were parents, and small children, and the two of us, who were effectively small children because we’d never done some of this stuff. Started off the day by taking a train out to Miura, which took about 50 minutes. We headed from there to the strawberry farm, where we picked strawberries and ate them with condensed milk, and then we climed to the peak (only about 250M) of “Miura-Fuji,” a small mountain in the area.

After the mountain, we climbed back down, and ate lunch in a garden before going “baby bamboo hunting.” This is effectively looking for dirt colored things in dirt, but it’s still fun - we found a bunch and I took them home (my couchsurfer of the week, Christine, cooked them - pretty tasty!). We then went to a beach, where there was an enormous amount of drinking and eating of BBQ’d meats, and I also met a schnauzer on the beach.

The next morning, I woke up, and met up with Khahn to head to Tsukuda park, near where Taro-san lives. It was a little crowded, but the trees were beautiful and there were cherry blossoms everywhere. The park itself overlooks the Sumida River, and the party boats and ferries were crusing by as well.

Reconcilable Differences on National Review Online

I’m disgruntled, too, and I’m going to get it all of my chest this morning: I’ve never voted for a Democrat in a general election in my life, and I don’t expect to anytime soon, but it’s been impossible for me over the past couple of years to get enthused about the Republican party. I voted for President Bush twice, and contributed to his campaign twice, but held my nose when I did it the second time. I don’t consider myself a Republican any longer. Thanks to this Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the Republican Party today is the party of pork-barrel spending, Congressional corruption — and, I know folks on this web site don’t want to hear it, but deep down they know it’s true — foreign and military policy incompetence. Frankly, speaking of incompetence, I think this Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century.

See, Republicans? Your party sucks. There’s no way around it - this administration is the blind leading the stupid.

Yes, still behind.

Coming Soon: Kyoto, Hakone, Miura-hanto, and Cherry Blossoms.

I promise! Soon! Really!