During October 2001 RItsuko and visited Japan. In Kyoto we visited the very famous Ryoanji Zen rock garden, but as always it was very crowded so it's a little hard to just quietly enjoy it.
However we did luck out at another place called Koto-in. For about half an hour, we were the only people there!
The Bamboo Forest in Kyoto was also a very nice place to spend some quiet time...
The Shinkansen bullet trains travel at very high speeds and are a great way to get around. There are a number of different variations, but I think they're all pretty cool looking. There's a little bit of a 1970s space age design feel to them.
I bought a bunch more plastic food in Tokyo's restaurant supply district. Now I'm almost all set to open my own restaurant. Here's a photo of some merchandise at one of the stores that sells them.
And the first time I went to Japan (1993) I saw this really energetic and entertaining street vendor outside the Akihabara electronics district train station. When I went in 1998 he was still there, and I had a great little exchange with him using my not very good Japanese. This trip we went by at around 1 pm and I was disappointed to see somebody else manning his station (uniquely identified by a diagram of a child with "dirty" areas highlighted). I thought maybe he had retired, so I left a little sad because part of my mission was to see him again. But when we stopped by again in the evening he was there!
We had a great exchange. He asked me where I was from, and I told him. Then he was showing off a product that was made by Bridgestone and he asked me to identify it. I told him "Oh yes, this is made by a high quality American company!" "No, no, no" he said, "Firestone is the American company, Bridgestone is Japanese." Then Ritsuko related how I had seen him several times over the years and I was really glad to see him again. It worked out great with the audience that had gathered. At the end of the show, I even bought something, a miracle cleaner he had used to bring a 10 Yen coin back to a shiny sparkle (which I got to keep)...
Copyright © 2001-2005 by Edward Beuchert