On our second full day in Kyoto we ate the last of the Fruit and some of the granola bars for breakfast; then we hopped on the #100 bus for the east side of Kyoto to see Ginkakuji-michi (the Silver Temple). The Silver Temple was much better than the Golden Temple because it was less overrun with tourists and also because the surrounding gardens were amazing. The cultivation of moss is, itself, remarkable, but to see the whole garden come together is quite impressive.
We got an early start, showered, dressed, and set out for the train station to buy bus passes before 8:00 am. 2,000 Yen for a 2 day all bus all subway pass is a good deal… also because it means you don’t have to pay attention to which company bus or subway you want to use, because in the city of Kyoto there are at least 3-4 different companies for public transit and most other passes don’t cover them all.
Wednesday, we went to the elementary school April visits a few times a week. We did a brief tour of the classes and had an audience with the principal and vice-principal. The school seemed wonderful, but we didn’t have as much time to spend there as we did in Jo-Chu. We had to rush through the school, stop for a quick Ramen lunch, and be back at April’s apartment in time for Karen to receive a several wonderful gifts from some of April’s students who were in Elizabethtown last year.
Tuesday 19 July 2005, we dressed in our nice clothes, carried our own house slippers so we didn’t have to use visitor slippers, and walked to Jo-Ho Chugakko Junior High School, known as Jo-Chu. Arriving at school a few minutes early (which was really on time) we met with the principal (Coach O’Sensei). Immediately we were amazed with how generous he was… treating us like honored guests would be putting it mildly.
Anita’s hair is finally long enough to put into psuedo-pig-tails! glory glory…
[Anita’s hair is finally long enough to put into psuedo-pig-tails! glory glory…
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Also, while you are looking at that photo, look around the friends 2005 photos – there are finally a few other pictures besides documentation of my various hair styles…
I have implemented a blogging system on my site (utilizing WordPress) and modified the display of my wiki to play well with the blog… The basics of the change are making the content fixed width, and moving the “article, discussion, edit, history, etc” tabs to a sidebar component on the wiki… then coming up with a shared header…
I still need to get the old blog entries into this system (very do-able), and I am thinking a homepage not in the wiki, is appropriate… either that or i should get rid of the “home” link in the header… hurumph – i think i’m going to remove the “home” link in the header now (since it’s the same as the wiki link for now).