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This is an interesting bit of Japanese culture - a locking umbrella stand. Not only did I use it, but
I had to help a little old japanese lady use the thing. The japanese don't stand for this whole "dripping
umbrella" thing - they've even started giving people umbrella condoms at store entrances to make certain you
don't drip on the floors.
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A tachi (Japanese long sword) from the Tokyo National Museum. One of the few things that I had enough light
to shoot. Sadly, I didn't note the year it was from.
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An equally old tsuba - a hilt, essentially.
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A kozuka - it's the part that fits through the rounded bit of the tsuba. It's essentially the hilt
of a knife which is also held attached to the scabbard. See the links page for pages with more details
on swords and sword fittings.
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A katana from the same collection. I kept shooting them like this because there didn't seem to be much point
in a heads-on shot of something so long and thin. You get a nice view of the hamon, anyway. (The wavy pattern
on the blade marking the line between the harder and softer bits of the sword.) That said...
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A front on view! The Japanese sword is an interesting thing - the blade is very much the work
of art, so they display them without any of the things a westerner would normally expect to see on a
sword, like a handle, for example.
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Robin and Alice (left to right) striking exactly the poses they apparently promised they wouldn't. For shame.
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I'm not really ogre-sized, it's just that Alice is really small. This was partway up Mt. Tokai (Takai? Hmm.) It was really a big hill. Very nice though.
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The view from an observation thing as we approached the top.
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Who knows? It looks interesting though.
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I'm not joking when I tell you that this monument was brought to you by the Boy Scouts of America.
Several thousand died during its construction, but I still couldn't be bothered to hold the
camera straight.
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We were approaching the shrine on the mountain when I noticed these statues all over the hillside.
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I took this because of the huge number of those tiny little white things on this little shrine. Those
are all little ceramic foxes - I mentioned them in the week one pictures.
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We actually got to the top via something more like a road than a path, so we made up for that
by taking a real path down - as you can see, it was more of a "stream" than a "path" in this part.
It made a nice change from paved surfaces.
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Robin took me to her favorite restaraunt, which was a really cool place. They actually send you
out to these little cabins (one per table) and give you prepared food to cook over a sort of
barbecue that they bring in. Everything is on sticks, and you just prop the sticks up and let things
roast. This was a shot of the outside.
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Sumo! I knew I wasn't going to be on time for a basho, (though I'd love to go to one if I get back to
Japan next year), so we went to a sumo stable instead. Poor Robin even allowed me to drag her out of bed
at something like 5:00 to get there in time.
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This little guy was actually doing a very good job of pushing the other wrestlers around.
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And the longer we staid, the bigger the wrestlers got.
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The white guys were the most senior, as evidenced by both their weight, and the fact
that they abused the less senior students, who obviously weren't allowed to talk back. One
of the white belts actually whacked a few people with a shinai (kendo stick) a few times, until
the stick broke.
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A fine example of what a Japanese Shinkansen looks like. Just like a UK train, but perfectly on time,
extremely fast, lots of legroom, smooth ride, and no foul smells. Actually, nothing like a UK train, except for
the rails. The rails which are better laid in Japan.
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This is part of the outer walls of the meiji castle at night. They light the whole castle - it's
great to wander around at night, though difficult to photograph.
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The castle itself! I think it's the largest and best preserved castle in Japan. It's quite large, and
just as well-maintained as any other building in Japan. You'd never even guess how old it is.
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The castle and more cherry blossoms. It's possible that the Japanese are so focused on cherry blossoms
simply because the things are everywhere. Speaking of which, when I got back to the UK, I discovered that
a neighbor has a cherry tree. You can't rake cherry blossom petals, in case you were wondering.
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Admission to the castle included admission to the gardens nearby, so we went over (by bike, thanks to Meiji's
excellent free bike loans program) and wandered through some great Japanese gardens, each with a particular
theme. Particular plants, etc. Now that I've said that, you'd think I'd tell you which garden this was, but I
won't, largely because I can't remember.
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Come to think of it, I think this was the deciduous garden.
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The problem with these gardens is that there are
about a million photographs in them - take a few steps and everything looks completely different, but it still
looks great.
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We staid the night in a temple grounds, which was actually the nicest place we staid - I loved it there.
The only drawback was the curfew. This was taken in the cemetary as the sun was setting.
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Another cemetary shot. It's probably entirely innapropriate to take pictures in cemetaries, but as dumb
foreigners, we figured we could get away with it.
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