Author: Grubb

When we left the Zenran-ji Temple we stopped for coffee and cake (Ella will describe).  Then we walked through neighborhoods of more upscale houses towards the center of town.  We passed a zoo.  Stopped for a crab roll at a market. After about forty-minutes we ended up at the Museum of Kyoto.  The museum had exhibits explaining the…

In most of the countries we’ve traveled to on Easter, places have been closed.  Here in Japan that certainly wasn’t going to be a concern.  But in keeping with a spirit of religious observance we elected to make a morning visit to the Eikan-dō Temple.  An early local bus took us to the foothills of Higashiyama, Kyoto’s eastern…

Ella’s talked about the tea house in the Lion’s Roar Garden, but what she didn’t mention was the little “traditional Japanese sweet” that, when we were staying in Sparky’s Place back in Naoshima, I confused with a bar of soap that had the same shape and color.  On our way out the door to tour the…

When we were visiting the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art this afternoon, I came across a painting that made me pause then do a double take.  It was part of an exhibition of mostly 19th century Polish artwork.  The painter was Jan Matejko and the subject was Stańczyk, a famous Polish court jester (1480-1560) employed by…

This morning we took a bus to a train to the Arishiyama district of Kyoto where our first stop was the Kimono Forest. Our second stop was devoted to averting the army of tourists swarming towards the large Tenryu-ji Temple.  (Size makes a difference when it comes to attracting crowds in World Heritage sites.)   Slipping away…

Left Sparky’s Place early this morning to catch the 6:40 AM ferry.  Not many people were leaving the island at that time.   We practically had the ferry to ourselves.  When it docked, we crossed the street to the train station and caught the one going straight to  Okayama just as it was leaving.  So, great, we got to…

Naoshima is a beautiful island noted for its attempt at being one big art exhibit.  To get visitors primed, outside the main port is a large red pumpkin people can crawl in and out of. A long block away from the big pumpkin is a bunraku statue.  Or at least that’s how the Portuguese sculptor describes it.  Bunraku…

Staying at Sparky’s Place on Naoshima island it follows that we should have a little bounce to our step heading out to the village of Honmura where it’s a custom to get a ticket to the five art houses.  Art houses are abandoned houses and office space that have been converted into venues for installation…

Before we got on the train this morning, Ella bought a bento box with eel laid out on a bed of rice.  While we were heading to Okayama (to transfer trains to Naoshima), she opened the box and dined.  It was the best meal we had all day.

On the ferry to Naoshima island this morning I glanced over at a man reading a graphic novel.  He was flipping the pages from left to right as one does reading Japanese where the eye travels from right to left.  It was like watching a film in reverse.  I kept expecting him to stop and start turning the…

Visiting Hiroshima, like Rotterdam, while I’m looking at the contemporary skyline there’s a black-and-white photo in my mind of a city reduced to rubble from an aerial bombardment.  There’s not much beauty to the functional look of a modern city unless you realize it has risen from almost total destruction.  What would be mundane is now magnificent, the…

This morning we took 45-minute boat ride from Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park to Miyajima Island.  Known for its sacred mountain, the island has a large vermilion shrine built on the water with a “floating gate”.  (I’ll leave it to Ella to describe how the O-torii Gate floats and sinks with the tides.)  Miyajima is also known for…

Rainy day here in Hiroshima, but at least it wasn’t black rain.  We took a walking tour with Kozo, a retired businessman who was raised here.  He took us to places we missed when we concentrated on the Peace Memorial Park yesterday, and then we went back to his apartment and he showed us how to prepare…

“Knock, knock.”  “Who’s there?”  “Adam.”  “Adam who?”  “Atom Bomb.”  I remember I was around four or five when my mother told me this joke.  Later, when I was growing up in Los Alamos, my friends used to kid around about living in a city of bomb makers.  But Oppenheimer and the scientists who built the atomic bomb left a weird legacy of…

Ohori Park has large pond that once was part of the moat system of Fukuoka Castle. It has gardens, and playing fields, and landscaped groves of peach, plum, and cherry trees.  The peach and cherry trees were still in bloom. The ruins of Fukuoka Castle still retain some of the slanted stone ramparts. And a towering…