Whereas Sunday in Ainokura had been drizzy-to-rainy, when I awoke Monday sunlight streamed in through the shōji. Breakfast was relatively simple: rice and nori, variously prepared mountain vegetables, miso soup. I packed up and headed out to the bus stop, pausing along the way to photograph the village in this more flattering light. The tourist buses hadn't started arriving yet, so I had the place nearly to myself. When a survey-taker spotted me, I obliged by responding to questions about what attracted me to Ainokura and various demographic questions. I was proud that I could get along in Japanese at least well enough to respond to basic survey questions, even if I'm far from fluent. With a complimentary packet of tea in hand, I strolled down to the bus stop... and my spirits sank as I realized I was late for the bus to Shirakawa-go. I waited around for a little while just in case that bus was late, but no luck.

I would be able to catch that bus later in the day, but I'd be forfeiting the reserved ticket I'd bought for the Nohi bus ride from Shirakawa-go to Takayama (required for that particular ride), and I wouldn't make it to Kyoto in time to meet up with my tour group at the appointed time. I decided I had to get to Shirakawa-go pronto.

I walked back up to Ainokura's welcome post and explained my situation to the man on duty, who helpfully called a taxi for me. The ride wasn't cheap, but I sucked it up, and I was impressed that the driver—a woman, and without white gloves!—knew the shortcuts necessary to get me to Shirakawa-go on time for my ticketed bus ride to Takayama, which was uneventful. At Takayama, I caught the Hida back to Nagoya. During that scenic ride, I turned on my cell phone again and this time it picked up a signal. I checked my e-mail and feed reader, trying to be judicious about data volume since T-mobile charges $.015/KB for international data roaming, which can add up if you're not more careful than I turned out to be.

I rode the shinkansen, smooth as ever, from Nagoya to Kyoto. At Kyoto Station I transferred to the local Karasuma Line. If I had remembered all the stairs I'd have to drag my luggage up and down in the local subway stations, I would have spent the few extra bucks to take a taxi instead. Note to Kyoto tourists, including my future self. :)

Finally I made it to the good ol' Palace Side Hotel, where I checked in. It was a relief to be in a familiar place, on schedule, and not need to move my luggage for a week. Down in the lobby, I met up with the group and we headed out for dinner at nearby Kurikuma. If memory serves, I ordered the curry udon just as I had two and a half years ago when I was there, but this time with tofu. It was a hearty, comforting meal finished off with a scoop of matcha ice cream that was entirely earned by my luggage-wrestling throughout the day.

This entry was originally posted at http://bokunenjin.dreamwidth.org/2016.html.

Sunday dawned in Takayama. After breakfast at the Best Western I boarded the Nohi bus to Shirakawa-go, which was another scenic ride, this one about an hour long.

In my original trip planning, I had hoped to stay at a gasshō-zukuri (合掌造り, literally "clasped-hands" style) inn in Shirakawa-go. I don't remember where I first heard of this rustic village in the mountains where people still lived in thatched-roof A-frame farmhouses and ate around sunken hearths, but seeing photos like this and this convinced me this was a place I wanted to visit. The traditional inns in a village like this don't have online reservations, so the easiest way for a less-than-fluent foreigner like me to book a stay at them is to use a site like Japanese Guest Houses that acts as an intermediary. That intermediation comes with a delay of about a day between when you request a room and when you get a response as to whether one's available at the inn you want. Possibly this wouldn't be a problem normally, but it turns out Doburoku Matsuri, an annual festival involving unrefined sake, was taking place in Shirakawa-go October 14-19. I assume that's why I couldn't find a single vacant room in Shirakawa-go that weekend over the course of a week of back-and-forth with Japanese Guest Houses. So I found another scenic village in the region with gasshō-zukuri houses. This one, called Ainokura (相倉), was a little smaller and more remote than Shirakawa-go, with the implication that it's also less tourist-choked. Ainokura was another bus ride beyond Shirakawa-go.

Once I got to Shirakawa-go, I had less than an hour to haul my heavy luggage from the Shirakawa-go bus stop up to the Ogimachi bus stop on the other side of the village, in order to catch the Kaetsuno bus to Ainokura. I muscled it up there in what turned out to be plenty of time. I was a little anxious waiting at the bus stop because it wasn't labeled (and there was no bench or shelter) and no one else was waiting there. Loads of private tour buses rumbled by, but when the appointed time arrived and the Kaetsuno bus was nowhere to be seen, I was worried. Trains and buses (and people) in Japan are never late, are they? This one was running a few minutes late after all—maybe because it was raining—and I boarded it with a sense of relief. For much of the ride I was the sole passenger, though eventually a few more people got on. Since this was the first time for me riding a local bus on my own in Japan, I thank JapanesePod101.com's Riding the Bus 1 and Riding the Bus 2 lessons for explaining to me how it works and the phrases to use.

I got off the bus at Ainokura-guchi and spent several minutes wondering which way to walk from there. Once I figured it out, it was about a ten-minute walk from the bus stop to Ainokura with heavy luggage. Note to travelers: take advantage of Japan's good luggage-handling services, if you're making any side trip where you'll have to haul your luggage, and have the bulk of your luggage sent ahead to the place where you'll be spending most of your trip (in my case that would've been in Kyoto). It'll save you an awful lot of difficulty.

Once I got to the inn where I would be staying that night, Goyomon, I entered with the expectation that at noon I was too early to check in. But this was a friendly place where "check-in time" is not a rule. I was shown to my tatami room, where the proprietress put my luggage before serving me tea and sweets in the main room by the irori.

I had the whole afternoon to explore Ainokura. I walked up the side of the mountain to the conjugal zelkova tree. I visited the folk life museums in the village. I visited Jinushi shrine. I photographed. I wandered. I visited a gift shop, where I bought some grain soup mixes, a CD of traditional village folk music, some rustic sweets similar to the ones I'd been served by the proprietress at Goyomon, kaishi embossed with a gasshō-zukuri design, and a cup of delicious yuzu ice cream.

I returned to Goyomon where there was more tea. As trout roasted on sticks in the sunken hearth, a couple from Hokkaido arrived to check in to another of the inn's rooms. They were very friendly; we chatted for a while. There are four guest rooms at Goyomon, so between me and the Hokkaido couple, the inn was operating at 50% of capacity. As usual for a Japanese home, there was no central heating, so the guest rooms each contained an electric heater to ward off the chill.

By this point I was satisfied that I'd seen most of the village and was a little tired, but there was time before dinner, so the proprietress generously drove me to Kuroba Onsen, about twenty minutes away by car.

Mind you, I had never been to an onsen before. I had been to Spa World, a Korean bathhouse here in the states, with some friends, so I had some experience being naked in a women-only bathhouse space. But this was in Japan, in a fairly remote area where I would be the only Westerner as well as completely on my own. This would not be a place catering to people new to the bathhouse experience and its particular etiquette. And from my understanding there is still some prejudice about foreigners being "dirty" and therefore undesirable at onsen. If that was the case here, it was too subtle for me to notice it. I paid my money at the front desk, disrobed in the women's changing room (I would call it a locker room but there were no lockers—yay for high-trust societies—only baskets on shelves), and entered the bathing area. I washed myself at one of the seated shower stations before entering the bath itself—that's probably the single most important point of etiquette/hygiene to know about Japanese and Korean bathhouses. I alternated between the indoor and outdoor baths, both of which were nearly empty of other patrons and thus quiet and relaxing. After an hour Goyomon's proprietress picked me up and drove me back to her inn.

Then dinner was served: koi-no-arai (fresh, raw carp), nameko-jiru (soup with nameko mushrooms), su-no-mono (mountain vegetables dressed with vinegar), kogomi no goma-ae (young fern with sesame paste), tempura, iwana-no-shioyaki (salt-grilled brook trout), ka-no-mono (pickles), and nimono (a simmered dish with Gokayama tofu, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and wild vegetables), and probably some other dishes that have escaped my memory. It was delicious, of course, and there were so many courses that I was stuffed by the end of the evening. The couple from Hokkaido shared some traditional sweets they'd brought as a nontraditional end to the meal, while the proprietress demonstrated the playing of a sasara, a traditional folk instrument. I'm surprised I didn't just fall asleep after that, but I stayed up a little while watching an ice-skating championship on TV that was of particular interest to the other guests. When I finally retired to my eight-tatami room, I slept soundly on a futon and a buckwheat chaff pillow.

Here are the pictures I took in Ainokura.

I'd also like to point you to Paul's Ainokura blog post. I don't know Paul, but he traveled to Ainokura about a year and a half ago and stayed at Goyomon, and his photos and description are excellent. If you're wondering what those dishes I described above look like, follow that link. I didn't see his writeup before my trip, but looking at it afterward I can say our experiences were very similar.

This entry was originally posted at http://bokunenjin.dreamwidth.org/1290.html.

Credit: NASA/JHU APL/CIW

I've been supporting MESSENGER's third flyby of Mercury last week. I've got a description of how it went in a friends-locked entry. The contact-heavy work schedule has scrambled my circadian rhythm from day to day, so that one of the reasons I'm looking forward to my upcoming vacation is because I'll have the opportunity to resume a consistent sleep schedule. Since I've been subjected to a simulated sort of jet lag practically every day for the past few weeks, I don't expected to be fazed at all by the real thing.

Credit: DP

Last week I gave a HacDC Lightning Talk on Kōdō, the Japanese Way of Incense, in which I'm by no means an expert. But I know a little, enough to give a five-minute overview and demo. When I go to Kyoto later this month I'm going to attend a Kōdō demo by a genuine expert, and next month I'll be making kneaded incense (nerikō) at a Tankokai DC workshop. So in the near future I'll know a lot more. Let me know if you're interested in an informal demo of the wood-chip incense that's heated by charcoal in an ash-filled censer; I'm happy to share it. The Lightning Talks event was a great success, with a stimulating variety of topics and speakers.

Credit: Mackenzie

On Saturday I led the DC LinuxChix contingent of a group outing (along with AWC Maryland and GWU Women in Computer Science) to the National Cryptologic Museum. We tagged along with a docent-led tour and learned quite a bit, though we only scratched the surface of the museum's fascinating collection.

Credit: Mackenzie

On Saturday evening I joined seelevarcuzzo and Mackenzie at the Japan-America Society's Otsukimi, a traditional moon-viewing event held in this case at the National Arboretum. It was great fun, with a bento dinner, sake, haiku composition, some slightly-unseasonal-feeling bon odori dancing, and even a little practice of our Japanese. I brought a borrowed telescope and set it up to have a good look at the moon; we were lucky to have a clear sky with only a few thin clouds occasionally floating artistically in front of the moon. I wish the event had lasted longer, as we missed our chance to wander around the Bonsai & Penjing Museum and it felt like we were just getting started as it was announced that it was time to pack up and leave.

Credit: Indy

On Sunday I went climbing at White Rocks, a spur from the temporarily-closed Sugarloaf Mountain. The weather was fantastic. I attempted Sugar & Spice (a 5.2 on the Yosemite Decimal System) and Lucifer (a 5.10/5.11), summiting neither but enjoying the climbs nonetheless. I'd be tempted to buy my own climbing shoes and harness but I'm a little discouraged that the local climbing gym has discontinued their auto belay system that would have allowed me to practice on my own.

And now to prepare for Tankokai DC's Autumn Chakai this weekend and my upcoming Japan trip that starts next week. Ack! I don't quite feel prepared for either.

Greetings from Kyoto! I'm having a great time, but I'll have to save the details and pictures for my return. The hotel lobby has a couple of computers, but there are much more fun things to do here than spend time at them. I just wanted to let you know all is well on the trip. またね！

A week from today, I'll be on my way to Kyoto for a ten-day vacation! It's a group trip with minimal hand-holding, which sounds like it will suit me just fine. I'm not planning on bringing my laptop, since it appears our lodgings don't provide 'net access, and if I'm going to wander around looking for wifi, I might just as well use the computers sitting in the hotel lobby or Internet cafe. So I got a 1 GB memory card for my camera to tide me over. I'm putting together a Minty Boost kit to bring with me so I've got a portable way to recharge my iPod. I also plan to bring my GPS receiver—a basic eTrex Legend—to keep track of where I am and maybe find a geocache or two.

Aside from the organized outings to traditional textile workshops and temple markets, I plan to visit the Urasenke Center. And this one may be quixotic, but I think it'd be great to get my hands on some Tosa Space Sake (土佐宇宙酒). While I doubt I'd be able to distinguish its taste from that of sake brewed with earth-bound yeast, the space part automatically makes it cool—just ask Queen Elizabeth II.

For a while I subscribed to the feed of Flickr's Kyoto Group photo pool, and I think I overdosed on photos of Kinkaku-ji, Ginkaku-ji, and Kiyomizu-dera to the extent that I now consider them hopelessly touristy. I'll just have to wander around and see what hidden treasures I can find.

I was randomly inspired to take and post pictures of some of my souvenirs from Japan. Many of them are postcards that we got as freebies.

Here are some of my miscellaneous observations about Japan.

• Riding on trains, you'll see a lot of rice paddies and a lot of hanging laundry.
  
• Queue behavior is more chaotic than I'd expected. (Presumably many Japanese people would argue that there is no queue in the places where I perceive one.)
  
• In Japanese eateries, you always get a moist hand towel at beginning of a meal.
  
• In two of the hotels we stayed in, the hotel keys come attached to big acrylic bars.
  
• Dogs are pretty popular, espeially akitas.
  
• Bicycles are popular, especially in Kyoto, where we saw, if I recall correctly, more than one bicyclist riding and taking her or his dog for a walk, on a leash, at the same time.
  
• Credit cards are accepted in surprisingly few establishments. Cash is king, which seems weird to me, in a generally high-tech country.
  
• Tattoos have quite a bad reputation, being associated with yakuza. In one of the Kyoto hotels where we stayed, no one with tattoos was allowed in the hotel pool. (Do I remember thewronghands mentioning that's a typical rule for sentō, as well?) Despite understanding the reason for the rule (and not having any tattoos myself, for the time being), I still find it hard to accept.
  
• Ichiro is a really big deal, as are the other MLB players from Japan.
  

We're back home! Here's the last batch of pictures.

On Sunday, our last full day in Japan, we visited the Sagano–Arashiyama area. We walked through bamboo groves and a little rural residential district. We visited Nonomiya Shrine, a Shintō shrine described as follows:

This shrine is what remains of the religious complex where Imperial princesses who would serve in Ise Shrine (the head shrine of the Imperial Family) underwent purification rites. Three small shrines remain here—the central one enshrining Amaterasu Omi-kami (the Sun Goddess), the left the God of Atago, and the right the God of Matsuo.

Princesses sent here by the emperor for purification were called Saigu. Initially, they went through a purification period within the Imperial Palace for a period of more than one year. After that, they came and stayed in the Nonomiya complex for three years, and then they were finally allowed to serve in Ise Shrine. The first Saigu that trained here was Princess Yamato upon the order of the Emperor Suijin. The custom lasted until the late 14th century.

Nonomiya Shrine is described in the world's oldest noval, the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. It is also frequently mentioned in Japanese noh theatre songs and tanka (verse).

Today's pictures.

Today we slept in and took some time to test-pack our things to make sure it'll be possible when it comes time to fly back to the States. It looks like it'll work. :)

In the afternoon and evening we walked around Ponto-chō, Gion, and Shinbashi. Along Kiyamachi-dōri the police were cracking down on illegally-parked scooters. We visited Yasaka-jinja, a seventeenth-century Shintō shrine that's said to guard Gion. It's a really pretty place to visit at night. The only geisha-type either of us saw was a maiko whom thedreadpilot spotted in the back of a taxicab. Maybe the taxi was just for convenience's sake, but I imagine it also saves them from hoards of tourists surrounding them on the street.

Next, green tea treats at a place called 都路里 (Saryo Tsujiri), where thedreadpilot had an 宇治フロート (Uji Float)—green tea ice cream floating in iced matcha—and I had an お茶の花束 (Ocha no Hanataba, "tea bouquet")—one scoop each of matcha-, genmaicha-, and bancha-flavored ice cream, topped with little matcha cookies.

We walked back to our hotel along the Teramachi covered shopping arcade, where we stopped in an actual arcade to play some drumming and car racing games and see some nifty ones the likes of which we've never seen back home. Perhaps the most impressive was a multiplayer medieval fantasy roleplaying videogame that seems to use cards (maybe RFID-embedded?) as the player interface. Each player lays down and moves cards on his playing surface and watches his own viewpoint on a monitor, while a larger monitor (out of sight of the players) shows the overall action to observers. Cool.

On Wednesday night we stayed at 吉今 (Yoshi Ima), a traditional Japanese inn called a ryokan, in Gion. It was a small affair, as everything in Gion is. When we arrived, several kimono-clad women carried our luggage in and showed us to our room, where we enjoyed some green tea to start off. Dinner was served shortly afterward; it comprised many small plates of special Kyōto-style dishes, many of which we couldn't identify. I tried on the provided yukata, and we took an after-dinner stroll in the immediate area. When we awoke the next morning, it was raining. thedreadpilot chose a Japanese-style breakfast of tofu, rice, pickled vegetables, and grilled fish, while I opted for a Western-style breakfast. To me, breakfast should not be a culinary adventure. (This from someone who, for years in high school, ate a strawberry pop-tart and a glass of milk for breakfast every day.) I appreciated having the option.

After breakfast, we walked eastward along the canal in Higashiyama-ku, past the Kyōto Municipal Zoo (at least we're guessing that was the source of the seal-barking sounds…), by an old inclined plane for barges, by the Lake Biwa Aqueduct Museum, and up the hill to Nanzen-ji temple. The temple grounds were quiet and beautiful; we could hear the unseen monks chanting as we walked around. On the way back to the ryokan to pick up our luggage, we stopped by the koi pond outside the Kyōto Municipal Museum of Art.

We stowed most of our luggage in a coin locker at Kyōto Station overnight while we rode out of town for at a night at Syoenso, a more rural ryokan with sentō. Our room there was just great; it was really a pair of spacious rooms with a sliding fusuma divider, a genkan, a full private bathroom, and—outdoors—our own private bathroom and hot bath. Niiiiiice. That evening brought another dinner of special Kyōto cuisine, which I probably don't appreciate enough, and which, again, we couldn't identify enough of to give it a good account. We enjoyed the outdoor bath a lot, though. For breakfast, there was no option: we were served a traditional Japanese breakfast; I ate the rice, yudofu, grilled salmon, and miso soup, and I left the pickled vegetables and steamed egg custard. All in all, although the food wasn't really up my alley, the setting was gorgeous, including the train ride out there on the Sagano Line. It would have been nice to stay longer.