Cerae's Visit

We had another visitor recently when Cerae (my brother's girlfriend) spent a week with us in Japan during her post-graduation holiday. I really enjoyed having her stay, and relished the opportunity to show her some nice places, food, and people. It's a great excuse for me to do more sightseeing! Chihiro and I met her in Tokyo central station (quite an achievement since it has about 7 floors, numerous shopping malls, and 30 platforms), and then we headed off to Asakusa to see the famous shrine. Cerae was a little worse for wear after her long trip, and Tokyo must have been a bit of a blur for her... masses of people, foreign language everywhere, buildings and streets crammed together, noise, smell, and bustle!
(No, she's not screaming at the old lady!) We had a chance to relax outside the shrine where some trained monkeys were performing. The first trainer was absolutely horrible, screaming at the poor monkey whenever it didn't do something fast enough. There was also one part of the act where the monkey was trained to "misbehave" for laughs, but it didn't work well. The second trainer (probably more experienced) had a smaller monkey and was much better. The monkey pouted on cue, jumped through hoops, did handstands and walked on stilts. In the end though, I felt a bit sorry for it even though it must have been well taken care of.

The week Cerae was here also happened to be the week that an international street performance festival was held in the city. The crowds were pretty thick, but many people came prepared with step-ladders or periscopes. While we couldn't appreciate the joke-telling clowns, there were some amazing acrobatic performers, and a very talented fire juggler. At the izakaya (pub-restaurant) we took Cerae to afterwards, we introduced her to some Japanese cuisine. As you can see, she has a very disbelieving expression as we tell her these fried shrimps are meant to be eaten whole - claws, head and tail.

Chihiro's family kindly took us on a long drive into the mountains north of Fuji where they and some friends had rented some apple trees for the year. The farmer takes care of the trees for them, and at the end of the year they get to pick all the apples and take them home. We saw some beautiful scenery on the way, but alas, the late night and 5am start was too much for me and I was asleep for most of the drive. The first photo is us with the son of the family friends (trained from birth to "peace" whenever a camera is pointed in his direction). The second is everyone enjoying apples straight off the tree. These were definitely the sweetest and crunchiest apples I've ever tasted.

One early morning we caught a shinkansen to Kyoto for a day-trip. We hired bicycles, like I did with Rene and Andrew, but this time we headed in a different direction. At one temple we were lucky enough to be there during a buddhist rememberance ceremony (you could call it a deathday celebration I guess). The chanting of the monks was...enchanting. They had really rich deep voices from doing it for decades. Outside, the atmosphere was completely different with kids from visiting pre-school chasing a large flock of pigeons around. We also visited the imperial park - I'm glad we weren't on foot.

For lunch we visited the famouse Tofu Cafe...absolutely delicious. If I could eat like this every day I'd become a vegetarian! At the famous "Golden Temple" there were so many busloads of tourists that it was difficult to get a clear shot of it from across the lake! After managing to get one person to take a photo of us (and then fail to press the button hard enough) we decided to do it ourselves. Even though the background looks fake, I assure you we did actually go there!

We also visited a temple with a famous "zen rock garden". I tried to meditate upon it but I gave up after 3 minutes. Those floor boards aren't as comfortable as they look. We had fun speculating about the meaning embedded in it, but I think it's basically just abstract art - you can come up with whatever meaning you want if you try hard enough. And maybe that was the point... for the monks to realise that there was no point and they should clear their minds. There was a beautiful little shrine built on an island in a lake in the temple grounds. After resting there for a few minutes we noticed that there were hundreds of little pebbles placed on the tops of all parts of the shrine. We puzzled on this for a while before deciding that visitors must put them up, so we continued the tradition.

On the last day we visited Chihiro's university and then caught a bus to nihondaira to see the temple there. We tried green-tea flavoured ice-cream at the top overlooking the sea, then caught the cablecar down to the temple. Apparently I am not gifted at describing things, because when we were planning what to do I had told Cerae it was "the tomb of a famous shogun", and when we went there she said the forest and mountain views were just beautiful, and the temple was really bright and amazingly detailed. I guess I'm not a good salesperson.