Kyoto. This place is fast becoming my favorite.

I left early in the morning, and planned on seeing most of the temples on the east side of town. However, going to Kyoto with an agenda is a bit like going to willy wonka's chocolate factory and planning on getting the everlasting gobstopper. You have all these great intentions, but then you pass the lickable wallpaper. How do you not stop to see lickable wallpaper? You follow that down to the chocolate river, which of course you have gawk at, so you try the 7 course meal bubble gum next, and then the fizzy drink,, and next thing you know it's 7:00, the sun went down an hour ago, and the gobstopper shop closed at 5:00.

In any case, I'll most likely head back again- the leaves will peak soon, which will be nothing short of amazing.

I started out at Kennin-ji, one of a great many temples in the city. Apparently there were several university students there kind of hosting the place for the day. I met some students from the calligraphy club that were exhibiting their work. The one in the picture is titled "the flow of time"*




































Next, I mean to head north, but I got well, distracted. The streets had some amazing shops, much better than the standard tourist fare. I mean the standard stuff was there, but with more flavor; for example, they didn't just have ceramic shops- they had the people right there in the store making the pottery.






















When I finished looking around (and being sad that the geisha I saw were just tourists that had paid to dress up, not the real thing), I found myself in front of Kiyomizu-dera (another temple thing). Now the temple itself was fairly impressive, but what was much more noteworthy was the scenery surrounding it- the temple is nestled in a wooded hillside, and the grounds contain beautiful trails that go below and above the temple.


























































At this point I was pretty lost (I had never intended to go south in the first place), so I tried to backtrack a bit. I finally got somewhat re-oriented, but I kept getting distracted by miscellaneous cool stuff.





































































The next place I went was Kodaj-ji (another temple- I sense a trend), founded by Kita-no-Mandokoro in memory of her husband. The place was pretty amazing.











































Next, I went to Maruyama park (it would be more accurate to say that I still didn't know where I was, and I kind of wandered into the park). The place was just beautiful (and had food, which was sounding really good at this point). There was a street performer there,, he juggled, performed a few magic tricks, and if the crowd was any indication, had alot of good jokes.










































ThenI went to Chion-in (although I didn't realize where I was until I looked it up later). It was constructed in the memory of a buddhist monk who apparently fasted to death. That sounds a bit over the top, but the grounds themselves were very nice (including a ginormous front gate, and a bell that takes 17 monks to ring).






























































After this, I went to the museum of modern art. They had recently acquired a collection of Edo era paintings which was pretty amazing, which was good because the rest of the museum reminded me how much I dislike 'modern art'.



















After this, I found a coffee shop that had a string quartet- three violins (or maybe a viola or two, not sure), and a cello. They were excellent- I stayed until they stopped playing. But the music of the evening wasn't over.




















Meet Taiga. Taiga played last year in a club in New York. He's going to the philidelphia jazz festival next year. Taiga is 8 years old, and Taiga is pretty amazing (ok, so he wasn't the best percussionist I've ever heard, but he was solid. And he's 8.) This little jazz group was playing next to the subway station,, a pleasant ending to a wonderful day.

















*or something like that. There were significant language barrier issues between us, but their patience and kindness made up for it.

Last Sunday I went just south of Kyoto to Fushimi-Inari Taisha, the shrine of many tori that was used in memoirs of a Geisha. When I was on my way there, I was expecting something well,,, smaller. What I found was an entire wooded hillside crisscrossed with paths of tori (the little orange things) stretching over 4 kilometers. The scenery was beautiful. I'd never seen a bamboo tree before. I mean sure, I'd seen bamboo, but not a living 40 foot tall pole- that was pretty cool.



































To get here though, I had to go through the Kyoto JR rail station- this was a first. This building is pretty amazing in and of itself- the place is maybe 200 yards long, and 11 stories high,, full of places to shop and eat. I've tried to capture a bit of it here, but I really can't adequately convey the open air feel of the place. But in any case, I loved it.


































Now the trip started to become noteworthy as I was thumbing through my handy Japanese guidebook. I was looking through it on the way to Kyoto, and it listed all the major festivals held in the region. As I read, I realized the Kurama fire festival was the evening of October 22. Now I didn't know what this would be exactly, but this was a no brainer. Fire festival. In 8 hours. 45 minutes away.






unfortunately the pictures didn't turn out that well in the dark, but yes- that is a 10 foot torch on parade. There were several. Then they threw them all in a bonfire, and carried this big shrine thing around with other fire implements. It was as awesome as it sounds (and more, they were doing this cool chant thing all the while,, really set the mood).

But anyway, this ended around 10:10. Now unfortunately, Kurama is a small city north of Kyoto. It is serviced by a single 2 car train every 10 minutes or so. I don't know how many people were trying to get out of Kurama that night, but I do have two pictures that illustrate the point pretty well (see the big red face in the first picture? I'm standing right in front of it when I took the second picture- that's the rest of the line).




















I made it back to Kyoto around 11:45. By the time I managed to change lines and get on the right train, it was maybe 12:10. Now the trains stop running around 12:30, which meant I was able to make it about 3 stops to the outskirts of Kyoto by the time they kicked me off. The trains started running again around 5:00, so I had alot of time to weigh the benefits of staying at the fire festival for those extra 40 minutes. However, it turned out that there were to other foreigners in the same boat I was- Frank (from Canada, here for a year or so teaching english) and Tara (from London, volunteering at a care home for about 9 months).














At first, we went out looking for a karaoke bar or internet cafe where they'd have a couch, chair, or some other kind of comfortable room we could crash in. However, the train's last stop was in more of a residential district, so we ended up just staying at the station, talking about life, politics, and poking fun at some of the phrases in Tara's book of useful japanese phrases. Turned out to be alot of fun.

































Finally the trains started running again at 4:50, and we went our separate ways. But not before this last photo op of victory, when we finally made it back to the Osaka station.



















For those keeping score, Frank's parents are Vietnamese, and Tara is a quarter Malaysian and a quarter Chinese- I was the only westerner of the bunch that actually looked western. And yes, I went to work monday morning, and yes, it was a very long and painful day :)

Up until now I've posted all the fun stuff, but I do actually work here on occasion.

What am I doing, do you ask? Frankly, you don't want to know.

Now this isn't because it's so terrible that it would destroy your psychological underpinnings, but because for a large part, it's boring. Now I get really cool results that mean a very great deal to me and my advisor, but the path taken to get those results is not especially glamorous.















To highlight this, I present the extruder. If you look at the first picture, you can see the guts of the thing. Now technically I'm extruding POPC:SM liposomes through a 100 nanometer filter to create vesicles of a uniform size. That sounded impressive, didn't it?

In reality it's two syringes connected in the middle. I push on the left till that syringe is empty. There's alot of resistance (remember the filter), so it takes anywhere from 1 to 4 minutes. Then I push on the right syringe until it's empty. Then I do it again. And again. And again. And again.















After that, I clean it and load up the next sample, 1 mililiter at a time. I've probably spent upwards of 25 hours of quality time with this thing, and it's what I did nearly all day last saturday.

Now as for sunday/sunday night/monday morning, that will have to wait for the next entry,,

So last friday night, my Japanese teacher (I take language lessons one day a week through a volunteer service) invited me to have dinner with her husband and another one of her students. The food was nothing short of awesome.

As main dishes, they had sushi (just about every different kind you could want) and tempura. Tempura is lotus root/eggplant/carrots/misc vegetables/shrimp/most other things you can think of fried in a light batter. It's pretty amazing.

There was also some kind of fried sausage/cheese something, a shoot/sprout heavy salad, and great company. The other student she had was from Greece, doing a math post doc. They also had white crane sake (which is, by the way, a very excellent brand).

The two were so hospitable to us,, making sure we had plenty to eat and drink, offering us little sweets as we left. It was strange though, some of the dinner conversation. Nobuko-san was talking to me as he poured me my drink, with his limited english. "I was in high school in 1945,, B-29's came, yes." He continued, as he finished filling my sake glass. "My house, burned to the ground,, but, well, that's war."
Now don't misunderstand the event, or the evening- these people were beyond kind, and it was just an old man telling me his story (there was alot more, that had nothing to do with the war, but it didn't stick in my mind). Yes of course, it was a ridiculously long time ago, and happened before me or my parents were born. But that didn't make it any less strange to me, being served sake by a man who survived the Osaka bombing raids.

My teacher (Nishiuchi san) lies often. I'll be in a lesson and manage to tell her what time the clock says, and she acts like I've cured cancer. When I fail in telling her how much money she's put down on the table, she's eternally patient and says "yes, Japanese is very hard, I'm sorry- you're doing well though". Now normally I prefer more honesty in interpersonal interactions, but in this particular setting, her complete blindness to my vast ignorance of Japanese is greatly appreciated.