At British school

We met Maki at her daughters Internatonal British School and enjoyed some of British culture. 

The parents put on Swedish, Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern foods as well as English fish and chips. 

Not bashful these Brits.  And to make money for the school there was also a pub and band.

While the parents were drinking and eating the kids could play in relative wild freedom,

And many headed home on their family mobiles. Some manage 3 kids on the bike with them.

The world is so full...

Of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings!

Encouragement for Doug Roberts to manipulate  nature artfully.

Sweet photography at Kyoto student art exhibition.

Encouragement to Rachel F. in her fashionista creation world of Paris.

Glorious food displays anyone can enjoy.

Even great ads to be found.

Dan thought Cam might like to ad this twist to soccer at the school....no head injuries ...just scraped knees!

Peaceful Morning in Kyoto

Once again got our beautiful breakfast from 7/11 and ate it in our room..not kidding 7/11 actually seems to have local suppliers of really good meals: all kinds of tofu, cooked eggs done in the whipped up and rolled Japanese style, skewers of chicken, beef, liver, pork, buns with all kinds of delicious savoury mixtures....and what seems to be a Japanese twist on Italian food. 

Here some pics of our Rhoykan which was in a traditional Japanese home.

 A little dining room.

One of our mates in the kitchen.

Lots of beautiful ceramic sinks.

Lovely shower room.

Oudoor garden and meditation spot on path to two tiny toilet rooms.

Note tap on top of toilet. You can wash your hands while filling toilet tank. 

We walked over to the Nijia castle...yes really the Shoguns and Emperor had use of these noble  warriors or trained killers. 

 Enjoyed a walk in the rain in their beautiful grounds walled by the biggest stone wall we've seen so far. 

Some of the cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom. This city is renounced for its blossom festival, the crowds of which neither of us is ready for.

We took time to wander around the steel and glitz "Cube" shopping centre before getting on the train.

Oh my dear girls the dresses I could try to get you to wear.

Be good and early and figure out where to stand for your train car as each train has about a 4-6 minute stop for passengers to board.   

If you're not there at the right right place at the right time....oh well.

Home shopping

I think you won' t believe us when we say how dark and quiet our home is or especially how good it smells. So here is our front door which has a Daphne blooming right in front of it. 

Then Brenda and Rob's apt yard below, small but sweet.

I rode out our gateway smelling the daphne along the way to the main road.

Oh I forgot to show the Mazda dealer on the corner ... Our sign post to daphne lane.

In my search for the closest department store I found this temple... Anyone know if it's Buddhist?

The statues get dressed for the cold weather.

Back 4 blocks and over 6, I found a small department store and managed to get most of the organizing stuff we needed. 

It was a bit  of a pile for easy bike riding on crowded streets....but success.

Here's the booty.

Kyoto

Kyoto

How's this for saving space:

amazing parking garage is where the cars are stacked on top of each other through an elevator system that rotates the cars.

Taking too long to to wait for pictures to come onto to my iPad..will try using my phone to put pics on blog and do comments. 

Went to the peace museum yesterday. Clear criticism of the militaristic govt and refusal of the Emperor not to surrender. Then we were at one of the first Buddhist temples which shows the amazing calm aesthetics developed in Japan.

Sweet Darkness

 

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

 

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

 

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

 

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

 

is too small for you.

 

~ David Whyte

Could have been a ten temple day

Dan & I zipped to Kyoto for part of spring break. We walked for hours the first night and found what we thought was the big craft market .....

...and the Ancient town area with tiny tiny alleys full of restaurants and bars. 

Enroute to find bicycles we came upon the Rukkanruk temple...... 

And a huge 10 block covered market.

Walked about 10 miles to find an open bike rental place. In lovely sunshine we started out on one of six major temple, shrine and ancient site routes. Thinking about food I wished for an outdoor cafe and there .....

.....along the river it appeared with one table outside, a fantastic bento box, tea and coffee floats, a potter inside with her beautiful ware to show off, and as always it seems the ultra cute and over the top polite young servers. Move over Dan the tie man.

The first and furthest temple on our actual bike route caused us to reflect on the great treasure of our huge natural forests in BC.

The ....temple was ...

Thanks to a reminder from Uli we lit a candles and said prayers for Ann McNab on her birthday which lead to lots of thoughts about all those living, dead and far away who lives are woven into ours. You are in our hearts.

It's sister temple... Equally stunning. I got Dan to lift up one of the thin wooden shreds that help clarify the huge effort it is to keep these ancient treasures in shape. Thousands of these pieces are layered like thatch sewn on somehow and cut on beautiful angles at the edges. 

From Glenn Dixon's book, The Pilgrim in the Palace of Language.(thanks to Nelly for this book). "Here and there we saw signs that the ancients had preceded us."

Several temples later we dove into a part of the old city and discovered that we had not seen the half or the best of it. This is an awesome UNESCO site a human world treasure, and luckily it was not bombed out of existence, as was planned like Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Japanese culture has developed some fine, fine ways of living that example living lightly and artfully on the earth. There are exceptions, paradoxes and complications to the sustainable in Japan and though North Americans excel in "super size" grossness can be found here too......

Another dear young server sporting a tie that rivals any Dan had...some sense of the turning of the tides. The wave of the next generation rushes in.

Phone Data is a marvellous thing!

 

Phone Data is marvellous! 

Sunday was very exciting! 

First, I finally got heat on in our sleeping room and off in our living room for the night, successfully turned on the stove, cooked breakfast and found our way to Quaker meeting on time! All this because Dan was given a phone with data and we could take pictures of our machines, discuss the button functions, as well as look up subways and rail lines.

Beautiful sweet, quiet meditation and meeting event! Yukiko Backes, the woman Dan's Uncle Ward knew, from an international Quaker gathering in the 70's, just happened to be visiting Tokyo meeting from Osaka. We met some young women from the Quaker school, a young British woman doing a year of mission work, and gave our travelling minute to the clerk, who wasn't quite sure what to do with it. One conversation was about what it was like to be a teenager, experience the political tyranny, bombing and work instead of school during the war. Another conversation was about the peace camp the Quaker youth were planning with Jewish, Palestinian kids. Over a simple lunch of soup, rice, salad and peanut brittle we heard more about the long running Quaker school started by Philadelphia meeting (1890's) and how this older group of Quakers now interfaces with the students by putting on retreats for them twice a year. The phone let us show Yukiko the letter Ward had sent to tell us about her. 

Then we went back to the throbbing masses at Shinjuku to meet Maki.....with luck...and thankfully...phones. I have been corresponding with Maki since it was decided we were coming. Mom(Mary Stickel) made the connection through Rev. George Takashima who travels through Kaslo most summers to talk with Canadians of Japanese descent and do a service at the United Church.

Maki's family is an international family and she teaches her daughter to dance between Japanese and Canadian cultures and languages. Dan suggested she google an American boy who shows off how he can speak 70 different languages. Happily we will meet up with Maki at various events I the future...starting with the embassy gathering on Friday, and then a fair at her daughter's school.

Sundays excitement was not over for the day. We zipped home to met up with our bike and furniture delivery man. We are not yet sure that we've communicated what we think we intended, so I wanted to wait out on the street. Just before I got out to the street we saw the delivery guy zip past our street on the major highway. Dan managed to find the web site of the store we went to, so called (thanks to the phone data as we don't have internet at our house yet) and told the man who answered on Sunday afternoon! that the delivery guy missed us. 15 minutes later the little truck got back around to our street corner near the Mazda dealer...( see I was not so silly for listing all the Japanese names I already know..though we do not pronounce them properly) and we celebrated recieving our bikes, chairs, coffee table, bed side table, recycling, cleaning and kitchen items...all from the same discount store....score!!!!!!

Simple things delight when all is a risk, or at least not sure. 

Our BC friends know how great the exercise is when you slowly step, one foot at a time, up a mountain and finally one of those steps puts you up on the top of a beautiful mountain with a 360% view. You see more. This language and culture adventure is like that....tiny steps, some backwards but exciting for the knowledge that soon there will be a greater view or understanding.

Everyone here who we've shown the picture of the dials of our washing machine to (before explaining the meaning to us) has said,"Oh what a special machine you have." Sorry Stu, telling us to try reading the Braille was no help, worse yet, Helene's suggestion to push all the buttons. I tried that strategy on the stove and wound up messing with timers which meant I had to wait til the next day to try again. Oh well, ate out again.

Dan got the wash started successfully but the results to his fancy new shirts were pretty demoralizing,"special" was not the word used for the machine right then. The  phone relieved a little stress when we were able to find  a dry cleaner nearby. We've had fun with a language app where you can speak English and have the Japanses spoken out for you or vice versa. The automated voice speaking for us makes everyone laugh especially because we have to gesture to get people to speak into it and it is a fun surprise for those who dare. Last night the first part of our dinner ende up to be a surprise of cold noodles and so we gave up and went to where we could point to pictures. Got to finesse the phone thing more...and stick to the goal to increase our language.