Yeah! Our last temple!  I shouldn’t say that but this hedgehog is tired of temples.  I have to ride in the backpack and I can’t see things!  I like seeing things!  The Zenko-Ji temple was first built in the 700’s!  Wow! That is 1300 years ago.  It is the ONLY form of Buddhism that allows both men and women to be the high priest.  I don’t know what that means but it made my human happy.  We were walking up to the main gate and the police came and told us to kneel.  At first we were a bit scared because we didn’t know what was going on but the high priestess came!  She gave everybody in line a blessing.  This is very, very unusual!  The woman next to us said it was like the Pope giving a personal blessing!  WOW!  We don’t know what she said but it was so cool.  Then, we were lucky enough to be there for the drumming.  It got really loud in the old temple but it was so neat.  You couldn’t take pictures but we have some of a monk ringing the bell outside.  This is the bell they used to start the 1998 Winter Olympics!  My human LOVES the Olympics.  She met somebody who won a gold medal at the 1998 games for the US in women’s hockey when she was in Africa.  But that was before I travelled with her.

Making Dumplings

We had a good question about people understanding up since we don’t speak Japanese!  Well, before we left home, we learned how to say “hello”, “please”, “no, thank-you”, “thank-you”, “yes” and “good-bye”.  Japanese is a very different language than English.  It has a different alphabet and word order.  All students in Japan learn English starting beginning in elementary school so we can usually find somebody in an emergency.  Most of the time, even if we don’t understand a word somebody is saying to us, we still know what they mean because people communicate by body language!  The pictures are of a lady in Takayama who was making dumplings.  She didn’t speak much English but we watched her cook and she let us sample the food! We understood each other because we used signs!  We also learned that if we laugh at ourselves, it makes it easier for other people.  Yesterday, my human wanted to make sure that she wasn’t eating any fish because it makes her sick.  She didn’t know the word for chicken, so she clucked!  Everybody knew what this tall American wanted then!  And she knew she looked silly but then she made a bunch of friends who were not afraid to try their English because would you be afraid to try to speak to somebody who if she didn’t know the right word acted it out?

Love, Hilda

Making Dumplings

The food in Japan is very different than in the US!  Japan is an island so they have lots of different types of fish.  My human doesn’t eat fish because some kinds make her really sick.  But she takes lots of pictures of what it looks like because it is so interesting.  In Japan, people eat fish for 2 or 3 meals!  That is a lot of fish.  I think our cats would like to eat that much fish.  We were surprised at how expensive fruit was here.  One apple can cost $1!  (The human doesn’t like apples either, but that is a different issue.)  That is really expensive.  But pineapples are served at breakfast so she eats that with rice.  I think that is very weird.  I hope she doesn’t keep doing that at home.   Here are some pictures of the different type of food we have seen so far in Japan.

Love,

Hilda

In Takayama, they have 2 parades a year.  One parade is in the spring and one is in the fall.  One is to ask for a good crop and one is to give thanks for a good crop.  They have 23 floats.  12 in the spring, 11 in the fall.  Over 300,000 people come each season to celebrate!  Each float is valued at over 2 million USD and is made of real gold!  Only 4 are on display at anytime and are behind very special glass so it is hard to take pictures.  We think we have one that worked.  They are soooooo beautiful! It can take up to 80 people to carry each float! 

We had a very good question about cars in Japan.  First, like in the UK in Japan, they drive on the other side of the road than the USA!  That means you have to look the other way when crossing the street.  It gets confusing sometimes.  It also means that the steering wheel is on the other side.  Most of the cars here are smaller and a bit more square.  There isn’t car racing here like NASCAR.  I don’t know if there is like Formula 1 or if there is a Grand Prix stop.  We took some pictures of cars so you can see!  We hope this answers your question.

The castle was built in 1603.  It was the castle for the first shogun, Ieyasu.  You couldn’t take pictures inside the castle which is too bad because there was one really cool thing.  When they built the castle, they made it so anytime anybody tried to sneak in, it made a noise like a bird.  There were places were built into the floor boards and walls were guards could jump out and capture who was breaking in!  It was pretty cool! Today, when everybody was walking it sounded like a bunch of birds! It was funny.  We took some pictures of the outside.  All of the carvings show how expensive it was to make the castle.  It means the shogun had lots of money and power.  And I’m sitting next to real gold.

Love,

Hilda

This is one of the oldest temples in Japan!  It was first built in 842.  They re-built it in the 1600’s.  You have to take off your shoes to walk thru the temples.  We liked that.  It is guarded by a warrior who is over 10 feet tall.  People used to believe that the statues could keep out the bad spirits.  I think they might be right!  We took some pictures of him.  We wouldn’t mess with him!

This is the Golden Temple of Japan.  It was built in 1397 as a retirement home for Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu.  Shoguns were warriors in Japan who would fight for the honor of Japan.  His grandson turned the retirement home into a temple.  It is now in a wooded park in the city.  It was burned down in 1950 but rebuilt except only the gold foils are on the outside now.

PS:  We heard that our friend Kellen had his first day of kindergarten today!  We hope he had fun!

Geishas at the Temple

Geishas avoiding the sun

Geisha’s are women in Kyoto (mostly) who study for years on how to do very beautiful fan dances and play a special type of 3 stringed instrument.  There are maybe only 180 left in all of Japan.  It is very rare to see a geisha as they stay hidden and only come out for certian tea events.  We were so excited because the day we went to the Kiyomizu-Dera temple they were there!

To Go Lunchs

Nagasaki Fishmarket

Nagasaki’s version of the Little Mermaid :)

To Go LunchsNagasaki’s version of the Little Mermaid Nagasaki Fishmarket

Here are a lot of pictures we took. We skipped the cable car! Yeah! The human found away to listen to football. Hey nephews? What happened to your Sooners?

Toy Samurai Swords - No, we didn't buy any!