Tonite, December 15th, is our last night in Kyoto. We are full of tears. Once again it is time to say goodbye. I have a lot of things I want to blog about, so I am just going to put everything I want to say into one big post with no real theme.
Last Night in Kyoto
We’re not done posting, not by a long shot, but our posts lag a bit. Tonight is our last night in Kyoto (followed by two more nights in Tokyo), and it is bittersweet. We will miss Kyoto; we already miss Budapest. But we are sick with wanderlust, there will be more adventure.
I’m very glad for all the friends we’ve made along the way. So many, it’s hard to name them all. To everyone we’ve met: please accept our sincerest thanks for making our travels so wonderful. Istvan, you should know we miss Budapest, and all the great people we met there very much! Radek and Kasia, thanks for being awesome neighbors: I hope one day to hear the rest of your explanation of Polish politics! Clayton, I’ve been thinking about our nights running around Budapest and Prague lately, and I hope that your new situation is working out; give Bara our love. Krishanna, thanks for helping us feel less isolated in Kyoto and being such a great neighbor. And thanks to Mariko and Cindy for becoming such fast friends with Amy. Chip Hollingsworth has been in many ways our constant point of contact with American life (and with our own sanity, sometimes). David Simmons is the bomb for letting us crash at his pad upon our re-entry to American life in Denver.
Bust mostly, thank you Amy for being my partner on this adventure; without you I’d never have thought to even try. I love you.
Categories: Budapest, Kyoto
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Nara!
A monk begging near Nara Station
On November 30th, we visited the nearby city of Nara. 45 minutes on a bus to Kyoto Station, then another 45 minutes on a train got us to the town where deer roam free and the giant Buddha hangs out. Read more
Categories: Kyoto
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Kurama & Kibune
On November 28th, we headed out to the city of Kurama. Right now is the best time to see the beautiful fall colors, and so the train line to Kurama runs special trains with big windows for viewing the leaves, and it slows down for about 3 minutes as as it goes through a particularly beautiful part of the woods where the maples have created a tunnel of color. Everyone oohs and ahhhs in unison. It was really awesome. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really photograph it well, so I don’t have much in the way of good pictures.
Categories: Kyoto
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Unexpected Visitors
Something very interesting happened in regards to our blog! A Japanese website found our blog and posted a summarized version of it in Japanese and posted a link to our site. In response we had 10,000 hits on our site from people in Japan. You may have noticed many of the comments on the last post, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, were from Japanese posters.
Categories: Kyoto
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Kinkaku-ji & Ginkaku-ji
I haven’t blogged in a while, so I apologize to those of you who’ve been following this. Our time here in Japan hasn’t been the smoothest. Don & I have been sick with colds, and I had to go to the doctor here twice for my own issues. We are doing better now, and I think I’ll stay on track for blogging for the remainder of the trip. Read more
Categories: Kyoto
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Osaka!
On Wednesday, November 9th, we ventured out to Osaka. Osaka is about a 40-50 minute train ride from Kyoto. We had originally considered living there instead of Kyoto because it is much bigger and has a bigger expat population. Osaka was fun, but I am very glad we opted for Kyoto. Osaka is a lot like Tokyo. It is very fast paced, crowded, densely commercialized, and generally overwhelming. It was great for a day visit though. I felt like I was back in Tokyo.
Categories: Kyoto
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Yakuza, Monkeys & Fushimi Inari Temple
So after Halloween, we spent a week just doing normal stuff. I am now teaching 4 sections and redeveloping a course, so that is taking up quite a bit of time. Don is spending a lot of time with Acadia, riding trains and hanging out. I always grade on Tuesdays, and Don & Cady do something together. They usually start the day at McDonald’s.
Categories: Kyoto
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Siphon coffee, Nyumen & Halloween
We like coffee a lot, and kind of randomly we discovered a totally new way of making coffee. Just down the street from us is a coffee shop called Hana Fusa, and it has a sign out front that advertises siphon coffee. We decided to have breakfast there and see what this was about. We went in, ordered some cinnamon toast on Japanese style Western bread (imagine about 1 inch thick really good Wonder bread) and coffee.
Categories: Kyoto
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Jidai Matsuri, First Playgroup, & Teramachi Shopping
It’s been a little while since I blogged. We are now almost 3 weeks into our trip! Things are going really well. Recently we were focusing on how things will go when we return to the states, and we’ve come up with our plan of attack. We will be flying back to Arkansas on December 18th. The week before Christmas we will load a storage cube from UPack moving services. We will enjoy the holidays with my family, then around the 27th we will drive to Denver. A friend of Don’s has generously offered to host us until we find an apartment, at which time we will unload our stuff which will have been moved to Denver’s Upack terminal. TMI? I don’t care. It took me a long time to come up with this brilliant plan, so I am going to blog about it. 
Our aim was to move as cheaply as possible, as quickly as possible (I start teaching in Aurora on Jan 9th), and have flexibility if the weather goes to crap. We’re really excited about the move now that we can see how it is going to play out. And we aim to get a two bedroom place, so that means we will have room for guests! We look forward to enjoying Denver with old and new friends. Read more
Categories: Kyoto
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