tourist

Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka

After leaving Takeo, I took a train to Fukuoka and then a shinkansen (a bullet train) to Kyoto. When I arrived, it was about 3:30pm, which was good timing as I could head directly to my ryokan guest house as check-in started at 3pm. As I was walking there, I saw a street market mostly en route. I asked a passerby if it was a regular event or just today, and she said it was just for today. I decided to walk through it, and it was a local crafts market so I was happy to get to check it out! As I was doing so, people began to start packing up for the day, but I saw probably 70% of the vendors. Then I checked into the ryokan. This was the only ryokan I had booked, as I wanted to try staying in traditional tatami mat and futon set-up. It was great to sleep in, but I did miss having surfaces to put belongings on other than the floor or super low table; I discovered that, overall, I prefer a Western-style room. After I got situated, I went back out and walked around the neighborhood and found a vegan restaurant for dinner!

The Fushimi Inari bamboo forest.

My first full day in Kyoto started off rainy. I had breakfast at a different vegan cafe (where many of the waitresses were artists and we bonded over our shared love!) and then headed to Fushimi Inari Taisha, a famous Shinto shrine. The entrance and early part of the shrine complex were full of tourists, but I managed to set out on a small forested trail which no one else was brave or foolish enough to attempt. In the beginning, it was pretty cool to get away from the crowds, but towards the middle I started to wonder if I was making poor life choices as the trail got pretty steep (and it was very wet); going up it wasn’t too bad but I was already not fancying going back down. Towards the back half, there was a beautiful bamboo forest and I met the tiniest frog I’ve ever seen! The trail abruptly ran into a blockade, and the only option in a forward-ish direction was a small offshoot of a path atop pressed down leaves. Since I didn’t particularly want to turn around and do the slippery downhill trek, I tried my luck and eventually this leaf corridor connected with a real pathway (with inlaid steps). After a little while longer, I ran into my first person for a while! As I looped my way back towards the front I ran into more and more folks and the famous rows of torii gates.

The tiniest frog, with a blade of grass and a forming water droplet for scale.

After Fushimi Inari Taisha, I had lunch and then headed to the Raku Museum. As you may already know, I have really enjoyed learning raku processes and wanted to see the works in this institution. I learned that Raku is a family name, and the Raku family gained renown for their style of ceramics such that their name became the name for the set of processes. What a legacy!

The Raku Museum is small, so I finished and still had some time in the day. It had also stopped raining! I decided to head to the famous (and sometimes infamous) Gion district known for geishas, which is right next to a well-known street full of restaurants. I walked around Gion, visited a small contemporary art museum there, and finished the evening with some vegan ramen.

The next day again started off rainy. I took a train to Nara to visit the famous Nara Park, which has thousands of wild sika deer, sacred in the Shinto religion, which have acclimated to living on the grounds and enjoy eating “crackers” that vendors sell to tourists to feed to the deer. I walked around Nara Park for a few hours, and then had lunch and took a train into Osaka. I stopped at a summer festival, Aizen, which was smaller than I imagined but was nevertheless interesting to attend. Then I headed to the Osaka Aquarium, as I heard it was world-class. I really enjoyed a number of the exhibits; I can’t recall having seen a flounder swim before, and I also was delighted and alarmed by the gurnards or sea robins (Triglidae) which have “walking rays” aka legs. They also had a kawaii or “cute” wing, where I very much enjoyed watching the spotted garden eels!

This is the Google Translate image of a sign outside Mirai’s enclosure.

The following morning I checked out of the ryokan, but I had them store my luggage as I wanted to explore more of Kyoto (and I couldn’t check in to my Tokyo hotel until 3pm). I then went to the Kyoto City Zoo for attempt number two at seeing tanuki that I could paint. Unfortunately they also only had one tanuki, and she was Immako’s twin Mirai. She, too, has already outlived the normal tanuki lifespan and has grave medical issues but is soldiering on. I did get to see a Japanese giant salamander, though, which was very cool! The zoo was right next door to Kyoto’s KYOCERA Museum of Art, so I went there afterwards and took in a Takashi Murakami exhibition as well as a local Japanese arts and crafts exhibition. I was really pleased with how much Murakami was using metal leaf in this exhibited artwork and with his written reflections on the material’s connection to Japan, since I intentionally chose to work with it quite a bit during this artist residency. On the way back to the ryokan, I passed a small photography museum so I checked that out as well!

Then I picked up my small suitcase and took a train and then a shinkansen to Toyko! I purposefully reserved a seat on this one so I could sit on the window side with Mt. Fuji, and then kept checking my map so I could look out the window when it was time! Fujisan was pretty cool; it had its own little cloud hat.

My First Trip to Ireland Journal

I am doing a summer residency in the Canary Islands, and Dublin was a possible layover en route.  My sister and I talked it over, and we decided to spend a little less than a week in Ireland (with our base in Dublin) before I headed over to Gran Canaria.

I had never been to Ireland before; in terms of nearby places, I have been to London, and I've been to Iceland, and a number of places in southern Europe.  Some general notes: Ireland is known for wet, relatively cold weather (locals repeatedly called rain "liquid sunshine"); the biggest cities aren't as dense as I would have expected; there isn't really an Irish cuisine apart from Guinness and whisky; and there is a super dominant tourist shop called Carroll's which you can find everywhere you turn around.  

Ireland had just finished up a referendum on abortion when we arrived, so there were still signs up from both points of view on almost every utility pole and light post.  We were told they have around 20-30 days to take them down before fines are levied.  The results of the referendum were approximately two to one in favor of repealing the Irish Eighth Amendment and allowing abortion up to six months of pregnancy in Ireland.  A number of the signs referenced the fact that though abortion wasn't legal (prior to the referendum), Irish women were getting abortions - they just had to travel outside of the country to do so.

Our first couple days we explored Dublin.  We visited the National Botanic Gardens, the Dublin Flea Market, the Dublin Zoo, Dublin Castle, the Natural History Museum, and also walked around most of downtown including repeatedly dipping into the Temple Bar district, admiring the churches and other architectural stand-outs, and browsing the many Carroll's just in case one had slightly different merchandise in stock.  Then we took a day trip bus tour to the west of Ireland and very briefly saw the city of Galway and the Burren karst landscape (I could spend hours just in the Burren - it's often called a "lunar landscape" and it has a lot of rare plants living amongst its limestone crevices), and spent a decent bit of time at the Cliffs of Moher.  We stopped by Howth one day, and the last day we did another day trip bus tour up to northern Ireland - which is still in the UK - and very briefly saw Belfast and the Dark Hedges and explored a little around the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge and the Giant's Causeway, which is an area of basalt columns and hexagonal stones formed by rapidly cooling lava during an ancient volcanic eruption.

It was a really great trip and I learned a lot more about Irish history and Ireland in general than I knew before going.  We were super fortunate and despite the normal weather patterns, it was sunny and pleasant much of the time we were there, cloudy for a day, and only rained for two of the mornings!  My favorite part was the tiny amount of time I got to explore the Burren, and my second favorite part was the still small amount of time I got to explore the Giant's Causeway.  Both were fascinating geological phenomenons with their own micro-ecologies.  Although my calves ached after all the hiking I did!

One interesting fact I learned is that Ireland doesn't have any native snakes.  That itself was neat to learn (legend has it that Saint Patrick cast them out), but the tour guide contended flat out that there are no snakes in Ireland to this day.  I thought that was extremely unlikely - England has snakes, which is similar enough to Ireland that it's improbable that the island itself is inhospitable, and invasive species are a worldwide problem.  But so far my googling hasn't led me to a different conclusion despite reports of people intentionally releasing snakes - so far it appears none have managed to establish populations.  Hopefully that's true as I don't wish invasive snakes upon Ireland!  I just think it's very surprising that humanity hasn't managed to muck that up yet.

Photos will follow in a subsequent post!