Japan
drorzel | September 23, 2007At dinner with my parents last night, we were talking about the dinners at Sumiyoshi, the ryokan we stayed at in Takayama. I haven't gotten around to uploading those pictures yet, but I dug this one out:
It's not the best picture of Kate, but she does provide a sense of scale... It was a great meal-- sashimi, tempura, beef cooked at the table, fish, pickles, miso soup, and probably some other things I'm forgetting.
There was also this from the next morning:
Which really just begs to be captioned "I Can Has Toaster," but discretion is the better part of valor.
Breakfast was served in the…
drorzel | September 22, 2007The city of Nara, near Kyoto, is full of temples and shrines dating back to the eigth centruy, when it was briefly the capital of Japan. One of the largest shrines in the city, the Kasuga Taisha shrine, is dedicated to deities that use deer as their sacred messengers.
As a result, deer are allowed to roam freely in Nara, and there are times when you can almost believe that they are sacred messengers of the gods:
Other times, not so much:
(The top picture shows a deer reclining next to the stone marker at the entrance of Todai-ji Temple, which houses the Great Buddha. The bottom picture was…
drorzel | September 12, 2007Two words: Beef Sushi
This was bought at a stand in Takayama, which takes a lot of pride in the local beef (which was, indeed, excellent). I'm not sure it's completely raw-- another place had a poster showing similar sushi pieces being roasted with a blowtorch, but alas, they were closed for renovations. I couldn't see exactly how this was prepared, but the color here mostly comes from a thick soy-sauce glaze put on the meat before it was served.
Even if it wasn't actually raw, it was certainly extremely rare. And goooooood....
drorzel | September 12, 2007Before it slips too far into the mists of memory, I should probably post some summary thoughts about Nippon 2007, the World SF Convention in Japan that Kate and I attended last week. To some degree, this will be inside-baseball stuff, but if you're not interested in fannish stuff, rest assured, there is some good, weighty physics stuff coming later. Also, some utter fluff. We aim to please, here at Chateau Steelypips.
So, the Worldcon in summary. Basically, I think it was an enjoyable experiment, and while I wouldn't call it an unqualified success, I'd be in favor of doing it again, several…
drorzel | September 9, 2007A few general observations from three weeks on vacation in Japan, in no particular order:
Thirteen hours is a long goddamn time to spend on a plane.
The Japanese can and will pickle damn near anything.
The Japanese love paper. This is not an exotic-art-of-origami reference, either: every commercial transaction in the country generates at least two pieces of paper, often with multiple stamps applied to them.
They also love packaging. If I didn't remember to tell her that it was ok to put all the croissants in the same bag, the clerk at the bakery in Yokohama would individually wrap each of the…
drorzel | September 4, 2007Worldcon wrapped up Monday morning, with a panel on blogs and LiveJournals in SF, which was recorded for a possible Tor podcast (it's not up yet, but may turn up in the next few days). If you'd like to hear what I sound like when I find myself moderating a con panel with no real preparation, that'll be your best chance.
After that, Kate and I made a swing out to the Ramen Museum (those who have been to grad school are groaning, but ramen can actually be pretty tasty when you use actual ingredients), and then into Tokyo for an evening stroll around Ginza. Tuesday, we made the trip out to Nikko…
drorzel | September 1, 2007Several days ago, I mentioned that I had taken over 1,000 pictures on the trip thus far. That number has increased somewhat since then, and I offered a prize to the person who comes closest to guessing the final number, without going over. Specifically, I promised something cheap and tacky from Japan.
I can now announce what the cheap and tacky item is: It's an honest-to-God glow-in-the-dark Great Buddha key chain, purchased at the official Great Buddha gift shop. so, if that sounds like the sort of ironic kitsch item that you just have to own, leave a guess in the comments as to the number…
drorzel | September 1, 2007If you really care about the winners of the 2007 Hugo Awards, you probably don't need me to tell you this, but the winners of the 2007 Hugo Awards were announced last night. The ceremony went off pretty well, and clocked in at just over two hours, so it was much better than the Academy Awards.
As for the actual results, I'm pretty happy. The fiction prizes went to works that I'm at least OK with-- I didn't vote the McDonald novelette first, but I didn't hate it. John Scalzi gave Dave Langford a really good run for "Best Fan Writer," but Langford got more second and third-place votes than John…
drorzel | August 29, 2007Back in 1998, when I was here for three months working outside of Tokyo, I made a trip down to Kamakura, which was the capital (or at least the seat of power) for a century or so, around 1200. It's a beautiful town, full of great old temples, but it was a pissy, cold, and rainy day when I visited.
Yesterday, Kate and I went back. And again, it rained-- it was a light drizzle when we left Yokohama, but a solid downpour when we were visiting an Inari shrine up in the hills. Apparently, I am not meant to see Kamakura on a clear day.
Anyway, having trekked down there, we saw most of the sights,…
drorzel | August 26, 2007One great link, while I'm posting things: rice paddy art in Inagadate:
[B]y precisely planting four varieties of rice with differently colored leaves in fields their ancestors have farmed for centuries, the people of Inakadate Village have this year grown remarkable reproductions of famous woodblock prints by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). And this is no cheap gimmick -- the images from the artist's "Fugaku Sanjurokkei (Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji)" on the 15,000-sq.-meter paddies are nothing if not spectacular in both their scale and detail -- even as every day brings them nearer to…
drorzel | August 26, 2007(I'm not sure what the right counter word for digital photos would be, but physical photographs would be flat things, so we'll go with "mai"...)
The post title pretty much says it: I have taken 1,000 pictures thus far on this trip. We're now in Yokohama, staying in an absurd room on the 62nd floor of the Landmark Tower, and we spent most of the day poking around in Tokyo. But the important thing is those thousand pictures, and here's a cheap reader contest:
How many picture will I have taken by the end of this trip?
Leave your guesses in the comments. The person who comes closest to the…
drorzel | August 25, 2007Saturday, we did a swing through northwest Kyoto, where there are a whole bunch of famous temples with gardens, spanning pretty much the full possible range. They range from the dry rock gardens (karesansui, according to Google) at Ryoanji to the faintly preposterous Golden Pavilion at Kinkakuji, which is, as the name suggests, covered in gold leaf.
We also got pretty much the full range of tourist experience-- we started at Daitokuji, which was pretty much empty (a couple of big tour groups came through one of the subtemples, but we were just about the only people in the other three), and…
drorzel | August 24, 2007No update yesterday, because we went to Nara, about an hour away by train, and hurried out to get an early start. Thursday was a light day, anyway-- the highlights were a visit to Nijo Jinya, which is a preserved Edo-period inn for feudal lords visiting Kyoto, and includes a number of slightly over-the-top security features for their protection. It's open by appointment only, and the tour is conducted in Japanese, but our hotel arranged a translator for us. Actually, there were two translators and a half translators, because there was another pair of foreigners on the tour, who had also…
drorzel | August 22, 2007(These regular updates are brought to you by the loaner laptops in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency, and the fact that jet lag has me waking up at 5 every morning, well before the restaurant opens for breakfast. They may or may not continue from Yokohama when we get there, but for now, it gives me something to do that won't disturb Kate's sleep...)
I've reproduced this title from memory, so I may have dropped a syllable or two. It refers to a scenic path running between the general area of Nanzen-ji and Ginkaku-ji, where the Silver Pavilion is located. The phrase is translated as "The…
drorzel | August 21, 2007(I think that's right-- we're drifting into phrasebook stuff, here...)
Another day of tourism, another golf shirt with visible salt crystals from dried sweat. Did I mention that it's really frickin' hot?
Today was a split day-- we spent the morning looking at temples near the Kyoto station, and after lunch took a train down to Himeji to see the Tokugawa-era castle there. It was a great day all around-- Too-ji temple was having their monthly flea market/ fair/ whatever, so we picked up some souvenirs, and I ate some weird food-- deep-fried bait (some sort of minnow-like fish), and fried…
drorzel | August 20, 2007My rudimentary Japanese will run out much too fast for me to keep up the conceit of titling all travel updates in Japanese, but we'll run with it while we can... I don't know if there's a Japanese equivalent of "It'sãnot the heat, it's the humidity," so we'll just go with this.
When I told people we were coming to Japan in August, the general reaction was "Good God, why then?" I didn't get to pick the dates for Worldcon, though, and anyway, I thought, "how bad could it be?"
Answer: Pretty freakin' bad. Tromping around eastern Kyoto yesterday was essentially the same as hiking on St. John,…
drorzel | August 19, 2007I'm sure I'm neither the first nor the last person to note that it probably says something about Japan that the ordinary meet-new-people ritual includes asking them "Please be kind to me." But, you know, sometimes you have to be obvious.
Anyway, I'm in Kyoto, typing on a loaner laptop in the hotel lobby. Don't expect a great deal of blogging via this method, because the keyboard is different, and I keep doing something to put it into hiragana mode, which makes a great big mess. The hotel is very nice, though, abd the staff speak excellent English, so I have not needed my abominable Japanese…