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Tuesday, April 23

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This was one VERY LONG day! We had a leisurely morning as our flight leaving Osaka was not until 8:45 PM. We decided that we would begin our day with a very long walk up along the Kamo River, which has really nice paths on both riverbanks, below street level, which minimizes the traffic noise. The weather today was warm and humid. As we reached the point where we needed to depart the river to reach our destination, the Kyoto Imperial Palace, we crossed a bridge and headed due west. We arrived at a very large urban park, not so much a landscaped garden, and entered. Following the map, we found our way to the imperial palace. This was a disappointment. We had been told by our guides that we could not enter the imperial palace, but no one had told us that we would not be able to see it! It was behind some very tall walls. We admired the ornate gates and then moved on, but we did see some nice flowering trees in the park. Not too far away was another large green space that o...
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Monday, April 22

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Today our tour encompassed three organized activities, and then we had mostly free time in the afternoon. We began by riding the bus up the hill to an area called Shogun-zuka. This is a historically significant location as the Emperor Kanmu came to this location and decided to move the capital to Kyoto in 794 AD. He also buried a statue of a Shogun. Today, there is a temple here, but the real attraction is the view. There were two different viewing platforms for admiring the city of Kyoto. The views were great, and we saw the Kyoto Tower (looks like a candle and has an observation deck and is also next to the camera store). The weather today was warm and a little humid, which impacted the clarity of the views. After admiring the views, there was a small garden to enjoy that was really lovely. Our next stop was the Ryoanji Temple (means "dragon peace temple"). The main attraction here is one of Japan's best known Zen rock gardens. We removed our shoes to enter t...
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Sunday, April 21, Easter

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Today began with a bus ride to Kyoto, Japan's imperial capital before Tokyo. When we arrived, we proceeded to a park on the west side of the city called Arashiyama. There is a temple in this park called Tenryuji (which means "heavenly dragon temple"), but that is not the main attraction. Rather we were there to see the gardens and an adjoining bamboo forest. We have once again warm sunny weather thank to "teruteru bouz." Mimi told us that the word "bouz" can also mean "Buddhist monk" in addition to "boy" because the doll has a shiny head like a monk or a boy. We learned that dori means street (and that Kyoto has very long names for its street intersections). We noticed that many of the streets are lined with pruned ginkgo trees that were just beginning to leaf out. Kyoto is one of Japan's most popular tourist destinations with forty million visitors per year. It is Japan's seventh largest city. Since the city was spared fr...
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Saturday, April 20

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Our tour today began with a long-ish bus ride (about one hour) to Nara, southeast of Osaka. Nara was the imperial capital prior to Kyoto, which was established as the capital in 710 AD. Nara is also the name of the prefecture (like a US state). The big attraction is actually quite big, the Great Buddha, which is the largest Buddha in Japan. The Great Buddha dates back to 756 AD. It resides in a Buddhist temple in the middle of the lovely Nara Park. Since it is Saturday, there are many people here. Before we went to the temple, though, we had a unique activity: feeding the tame deer, who live in the park. Even when we arrived at the bus parking lot, we could see deer milling about, oblivious to the crowds. They were not especially attractive with matted fur and horns beginning to grow, and they were certainly not afraid of us! We then walked down a lovely pathway lined with concrete lanterns that have paper covers. There were also lovely cedar and cypress trees. The lanterns are donated...
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Friday, April 19

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Our day began, as we were to depart Hakone and travel to Osaka, with a visit to the Okada Museum of Art in Hakone. This impressive museum was founded by Kazuo Okada, who made his money in the Pachinko business (kind of a pinball gambling game for which you see frequent signs) and amassed his personal collection. The museum opened in 2013 and was incredible. The ground floor had amazing ceramic pieces from China and Japan, really beautiful pieces displayed in a dim environment. Upstairs the temporary exhibition featured thirty gold folding screens. These were so beautiful also. What an incredible display. There was one called “Waves” that really moved Roy. A more modern screen was called Irises. You could walk in and stare at these all day. The third floor had lovely paintings and other items. Sadly, no photographs were permitted. However, a good photograph appeared in the New York Times in 2017 as part of an article about the museum. Behind the museum was a garden, but we passed o...
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Thursday, April 18

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Today, we left Tokyo to drive to Hakone, home of Hakone National Park. Hakone is located in the Kanagawa prefecture, which is similar to a US state. There are 47 prefectures in Japan, including the city of Tokyo. The capital of Kanagawa is Yokohama, which is the second largest city in Japan with 3.5 million people. Osaka is third largest with 2.5 million, and Nagoya (home to Toyota) is fourth with 2.0 million. The summit of Mt. Fuji, known as the "shy mountain," is not part of any prefecture, but belongs to a Shinto shrine.  There are also four major islands in Japan: Honshu, the main island; Hokkaido, whose capital is Sapporo; Kyushu; and Shikoku. Before boarding the bus we had a question for Mimi. We asked her to draw us the symbols that represent the name of Japan. The top symbol is “sun” and below that is a symbol that means “origin of." Thus, Japan is the origin of the sun, also known in the west as land of the rising sun. 日本 On the bus ride to Hakone, Mimi pr...
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