January round up, Okonomiyaki-style

I keep meaning to write posts for the last couple of weeks but am only now opening up the blog. This might have something to do with the fact that I've actually been able to do some of my own writing again lately - large scale, chapter-length material and not just smaller fiddly bits and editing of old stuff. While there isn't really a choice between the two types of writing, it is kind of a shame since we have been kind of busy and have a lot to post about.
Our post-New Year's trip decision to work harder to make it outside of Osaka has been fairly successful. After Fushimi and Kurama, we have been able to make excursions of varying intensity at least once a week, though we have been dissuaded from some of our hiking plans because of the cold.
We'll have more pictures later, but I'll just run down some of the highlights here.
Nara (奈良）
Nara is one of the oldest capital cities of Japan (in addition to Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo) and is only a 45 minute train ride from our apartment. It is snuggly rooted in the base of some medium sized mountains/hills one valley farther inland from Osaka and sort of feels like hybrid town, somewhere between a small town in Northern California and Kyoto. Like Kyoto there are temples everywhere and it is clear that this place has been inhabited fairly consistently for centuries (it was the capital throughout most of the 700s). But it's less crowded so the gentle slope upwards into the hills is more perceptible.
Anyway, we've been there twice, once to see Todaiji (東大寺) has the larget bronze "Buddha Vairocana", which is one of the largest buddhas in Japan, Daibutsu (大仏), though we left the camera memory card at home that day, so we didn't get good pictures. So here's one from the interwebs:

Notice the dude between his legs to get a sense for the size... 

So Nara is awesome, with lots of deer roaming the streets of the temple area and trying to get food off of anyone that passes by. 

We went back to Nara some days after this initial trip to watch the burning of Wakakusayama, which is a mountain behind the temple area, complete with fireworks. I'll let Rachel blog more about that one, but here is a picture of the fire from a reasonable distance (i.e., uncrowded). 

Anyway, I think that there are more things to see and do in Nara so expect more cool discoveries in the blog. 

Kinkakuji (金閣寺) in Kyoto

Kinkakuji is the "Golden temple" - one of the many that litter Kyoto. We had wanted to go when we were visiting Kyoto this summer, but the heat was too oppressive and we only saw the silver temple, its counterpart on the other side of the city. (Seriously, I started to feel faint from the heat/dehydration when we saw that other temple back then.) The temple area is not all that exciting in itself, and the real attraction is the outside of the temple, which is covered in gold leaf. 

Wakayama (和歌山)

Our most recent trip was down south of Osaka to the coastal city of Wakayama. It's another port/industry town... not quite sure about how it relates in size to other towns in the area (because I'm too lazy to even wiki this information...) but it was another spread out group of city and associated suburbs. Outside of the general desire to see the town, the big attraction was the castle, which is one of my favorites so far. 

View from the balcony at the top, with the courtyard below (with approaching tour group...)

We also saw a temple out in the suburbs, which was nice for the lack of crowds - though for some reason we didn't get many pictures of the temple area itself. 

Wakayama also has great surrounding mountains and sea views, which were especially nice because the weather was especially mixed between hazy and sunny. Here are a few of my favorites:

View from the Castle

Islands to the south/west

Mountains on the south (near islands in above picture)

Guitalele

In addition to travels, we've also been doing more and more music with Samba, dance clubs (=research) and Rachel's taiko lessons. Rachel got a caixa for samba, which is pretty awesome, but I've been to fewer practices and am actually less interested in gaining proficiency in any one drum (though I've been moving between the various instruments, learning little bits here and there). I have, however, wanted to contribute more and get an instrument to use in the house so that I don't lose my sanity (the period between September and January was the longest I've been without an instrument for as long as I can remember). So I ended up getting a guitalele, which is basically a large ukulele with a wider neck to accomodate two lower pitched strings. 

Anyway, that's all for now. I guess I had unreasonably low expectations for myself in this blogging session, but it still is only a small insight into the multitude of our January activities (when we aren't sitting on the couch...)