Japan and Kyle, Tokyo<\/p>\n
Japan is wonderful and surprisingly Kyle has been an amazing tour guide:) Honestly though I don’t know how I would have navigated this country without him. Hardly no one speaks English, so it’s not as if you can ask for help when lost or when you try to escape the train station and the paddles keep hitting you and blocking your departure. No one can help you, though you know they would like to, but they don’t speak your language to explain what to do. One tries not to panic in these situations but let’s face it…this one kind of did:( Flying 12 hours, waiting at airports for 3 hours, not sleeping well and 2 hour train rides can kind of put one over the edge. Have you noticed I am using the word one and Leigh Ann interchangeably? Anyway that was my experience coming to Japan…there was a little more and suffice it to say I wanted to choke my wonderful son but in the end we found one another and since then all has been well:)<\/p>\n
The first day Kyle took me to some Japanese garden called Sankeien. The gardens were beautiful, tranquil and serene. Mostly older people dotted the landscape painting the scene before them with their watercolors. They were all very good from what I could tell. I guess you make sure and learn at home before you expose yourself to public humiliation. I just thought…now that is how I would like to spend my retirement years. So I guess I better start that water color class that I have been putting off now for so many years. In this garden are also either actual, rebuilt or repaired buildings from different periods. It is hard to describe but really beautiful. The Japanese maples are in full blown fall mode bursting with reds and oranges and yellows. It’s really beautiful! It’s kind of like our late September or early October. Still a few flowers here and there, a few leafless trees, the evergreens and then the colorful maples. It’s cold here though, I’m following summer and I have been cold everywhere except the first 5 days in Fiji:) Kyle tells me it’s in the 40’s but I think he is fibbing:) That night we went to dinner with a bunch of Kyle’s friends all or most PHD students studying something to do with Asian cultures. All very nice and I didn’t really feel stupid at all…it’s great being too stupid to feel stupid:) And Cindy just for you…I will describe the food. We, okay they, ordered an assortment of things from raw fish, to fried veggies, then some kind of cabbage, egg, squid and mayo mixed together cooked at the table. I suck at chopsticks and this is not like home where they offer you the fork option…so I apologized for my lack of skills and dug in. It was all very tasty. I find I really have to work hard to eat here but of course have lost no weight:(<\/p>\n
The 2nd day we went to what seemed like a Japanese neighborhood. Kyle later told me it was called Kamakura. We just meandered through it and then would come upon a little entrance and the next thing I knew we would be looking at ancient temples. It was amazing! So beautiful, the architecture is all at once simple and complex and makes you feel calm. Kyle’s friend Ling Ling explained to me that, that was the point, that it was Zen. So just so y’all know, I get Zen:) We went on paths through forest and looked at many temples and then we pop back out in to the neighborhood again, or possibly a different one, who knows? A mile or so later we end up at another entrance and lo and behold we see the enormous bronze buddha. It was stunning. spectacular, awesome…well it made me cry. Though that is not a terribly difficult feat these days, everything seems to make this non crier cry:)<\/p>\n
The third day Kyle had appointments and I just read. That’s a nice luxury too:)<\/p>\n
Yesterday we went to Tokyo. We are babysitting a naked cat. A hairless, weird, bizarre, pathetic kind of cat for two nights. When we got through the maze of trains which Kyle does so well he took me to Shibuya, the heart of Tokyo…think Times Square on steroids…but in Tokyo. It was amazing…there is that word again, but true. I am loving every minute of Japan. Kyle has been the best tour guide\/son ever and as stated previously I’m not sure I could do this country without him. We will be traveling to Kyoto soon and touring different areas and then on to Taiwan…more to come.<\/p>\n
For now Sayonara from Tokyo Japan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japan and Kyle, Tokyo Japan is wonderful and surprisingly Kyle has been an amazing tour guide:) Honestly though I don’t know how I would have navigated this country without him. Hardly no one speaks English, so it’s not as if… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soulypositive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}