Noh, noh, Nanette

Everyone has heard of Kabuki theater, but until this trip I was unware of Noh theater.  I don't know enough obout eiher one to explain the difference, but last night Benjamin took us to a theater for a Noh performance that was most interesting.  There was lots of weird precussion and potato pipe music, along with kimono clad actors whose chanting came from deep within their diaphrams.  One fellow had on a wacky mask outfit as well (he portrayed a fox that helped a backsmith forge a sword for the emperor.) It was quite a spectacle and their was a question and answer session afterwards.

Today we went to the Senbon Tori Shinto shrine far to the south of here that features a thousand gates and a trek up a mountainside that would have taken over two hours to complete had we undertaken it.As it was, we turned around about one third of the way up, having enjoyed all the spiritual enlightenment we could stand. At the base of that temple were any number of food vendors serving up some of the strangest food I have ever seen and some that was strangely familiar.

My health has been quite poor this trip with a variety of symptoms I needn't get into here.  Added to these physical maladies are my worries over the return trip, which due to the airport slowdown in the states could become quite complicated.  This trip has taken quite a bit our of me, overall, and I question if I will be capable or willing to ever undertake another one.

Man, That Cat is High!

Yesterday began as a normal quest for breakfast along the main street of Kyoto. The weather was perfect and the crowds of tourist had abated somewhat. We made our way to a giant shopping mall/arcade that features more stores and little eateries then you can shake a stick at. 

 I have observed once again that the cellphone (or the erroneously named "smartphone" is a mixed blessing. While it can help with one's navigation, it demands your attention to the point of excluding everything else. Perhaps I am just old-fashioned, but it seems to me that if I consult a paper map I retain the impression of the route longer in my mind than I can while periodically glancing at the tiny screen.haveen on the phone screen.  

This morning when we visited the huge shopping mall, we took in two rather unusual attractions. The first was a cat cafe where patrons pay a fee to sit in a comfortable lounge petting tame cats. The cats were very tame and gentle and loved. The little treats that we gave them while we enjoyed sodas and coffee. Customers are encouraged to draw pictures of the cats and Benjamin did a very nice sketch of one fellow with an ugly smushed up face that actually made the cat look adorable.

The second attraction was more unusual. There is a bar where one can drink beer and shoot air gun pellets at targets with the very friendly owner.  We had a couple of cold ones and then took our places on the firing line. My performance was dismal. The target was dark as were the sights on the automatic pistol I was using (at least that is my excuse!)  I never hit the bullseye!

I ended the evening by going to a movie that Benjamin wanted to see in a giant Imax theater. It was surprisingly uncrowded.

The the film was a science fiction epic featuring the "Predator " character. There was lots of action and great special effects along with several humorous  scenes hidden throughout the film. It was as if the director wanted viewers to not take the film too seriously. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Dateline: Kyoto

This is the first time I have ever composed a travel blog entry on my cell phone. Errors and misspellings will prevail I am sure. Because I am dictating this, punctuation is also suspect but how anyone can use the tiny keyboard on these phones is beyond me so I will continue speaking and hope to clean this up before it is posted.

We are traveling with our son, Benjamin, the first time we have gone on on overseas trip with him since he was eighteen. That trip was to Australia when I was still working. Now I don't have the excuse of a convention or professional meeting to get travel assistance from the university. Fair enough. I never really attended much of those meetings anyway; they were so boring.

We arrived in Japan last week and stayed in Tokyo 5 days. The city is huge and somewhat confusing. The subway system is a bewildering maze of different colored routes. To complicate things further, there is more than one subway company, so you must buy separate tickets unless you invest in a multi-pass, an option we did not choose because our stay was so short.

We arrived in Kyoto two days ago and have found it a very different place. it is still a huge city, but with narrow streets and crowds of tourists navigating the streets is more of a challenge. This city was not bombed during World War 2. As a result the architecture seems more authentic and ancient.

Some brief observations:

1. The people are incredibly friendly and nice. Benjamin and I tower above the average citizen, and considering their pleasant demeanor they almost seem like H.G. Wells's Eloi to me!

2. We have seen few homeless and mendicants in thesec ities, quite different from Tucson or New York City.

3: The streets are incredibly clean. The the public green spaces are well maintained and inviting. We could learn so much from these people.

4. There is one vending machine for every 10 Japanese. None of them take a ¥50 coin, but they will return a 50 in change!

Boys will be boys....

Yessir, the vice president of the United States has reassured us that the vile text messages exchanged by the Young Republicans are just an example of kids doing "stupid things." I feel so much better now, but I wonder: what happens when these kids grow up?

Worm Your Way Out of This One

Can there be any doubt at this late date that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum? What national sin did we all commit to deserve these clowns? President Lincoln made the observation on more than one occasion that the Civil War was our collective price for the institution of slavery, but at least there was an end in sight back then. Now idiots like these are leading us all into a new Dark Ages, where superstition supplants science, and ignorance is celebrated while education is scorned. Recovery from this descent into darkness is most defintely NOT in sight.

Stranger in a Strange Land

I make this final trip entry from the comfort of our own living room, which we reached after a marathon 36 hour journey from an airport hotel in Dublin, a flight to Chicago, another flight to Phoenix, a motor coach ride down to Tucson, and a final drive in our own car the last two miles to our driveway. Jayne managed to sleep a bit on the plane, but I was unable to take advantage of the reclining seat and doze off myself. It was exhausting, but we made every connection without a hitch.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Killkenny. The first night we went to a bar just about 100 feetfrom this hotel and heard a delightful trio of musicians playing traditional Irish music that was beautiful and emotionally moving. It required that we stay up later than usual, but the tunes were so lively that it did not seem a hardship. The next day we toured the large castle that dominates the little town, and we explored a few other sights such as an ancient church with a giant watchtower. That evening we wanted to go out and hear more music, but we got sidetracked by visiting the Hole in the Wall, a delightful miniature pub with room for only six patrons and a bartender. The place was built in 1327 and it both looked and smelled it, but we had a delightful time talking with the Israeli bartender, an African born woman of Welsh descent, a German woman who had lived in Ireland for 17 years, and two ordinary Irishmen who wandered in during our stay. The conversation was pleasant and we really liked getting to meet more locals on this trip. The next day we took the train back to Dublin which was a brief hour and a half of sitting and watching the countryside roll by. Once we gained the city, we took a coach to the airport, and then a cab to our hotel, staying there until time to go to the airport the following morning. It is all a blur at this late date.

We have returned to a country and a society that I find hard to recognize. A vague uneasiness has taken hold as I have driven around the town the last few days, a feeling that over half the people I see I have nothing in common with. We have been avoiding the news, but of course you cannot escape at least a few blurbs leaking out from a cycle of 24 hour coverage of the Orange Lunatic and his antics. A brief ray of sunshine has appeared in the rejection of one of the wannabe dictator's most ardent admirers, Kari "Okie" Lake in her bid for the US senate seat for Arizona. A fanatical election-denier, Lake finds it difficult to question this cycle's results because her Orange god-king actually won in this state while she lost. A fitting end to a career of deciet. All the same, I feel like a stranger in a strange land now, and that will be a sensation hard to shake for the next turbulent four years.

In the Interior

We have left Dublin and taken a comfortable train ride to the center of southern Ireland, the small city of Killkenny. Our last day in Dublin was spent at the National Museum of Archaeology and the Botanical Gardens. Both were impressive. At the gardens we saw, in addition to the magnificently manicured lawns and hedges, two massive greenhouses which seemed to contain an impossible selection of plants from all over the world. In the largest of these greenhouses the palm trees grew at least three storeys tall and threatened to press against the glass even higher overhead. There was also a large cactus room with many specimens from South America, including a couple that looked very much like saguaros. The grounds outside also had a replica Viking hut that looked particularly comfortable in spite of the loosely woven branches that made up the walls. Adjacent to the gardens was the extensive Glasnevin Cemetery, which is kind of a who's who of Irish dead. We saw one tombstone, or more accurately a cenotaph, erected to the memory of family members who had died in Butte, Montana!

Our next stop at the Museum of Archaeology had a lot to do with death as well. Exibits of artifacts recovered in Ireland from the stone age to the 1500s were arranged in chronological order. Of particular interest were a set of bog "mummies" of ancient people who were preserved through the nature of the soil in which they were found. It has been speculated that some were victims of ritual sacrifice. What struck me was the fact that these remains, who were once real, breathing people, are preserved and displayed for we of the present age, without the slightest hesitation. Compare that to the controversy in our own country regarding the display of ancient Indian remains.

This morning we took the train from Dublin to Killkenny, a pleasant ride of one and a half hours that allowed us to see some of this incredible green landscape. Sheep and cow paddocks, small homes, and overcast skies all went wizzing by as we relaxed and took it all in. We are now in another comfortable hotel room and tomorrow we will tour yet ANOTHER CASTLE!