Sea cucumber

in a thick yam foam. Indecently tender beef tongue with braised daikon. Monkfish liver, garnished with a pair of roasted gingko nuts skewered onto a single two-pronged pine needle. Sticky rice with shredded dried-smoked sea bream and pickled plum morsels. Urchin in egg custard, in a tiny cup with a persimmon leaf balanced on top. A completely insanely presented sashimi course (that's the pic).

These morsels were only part of the multi-course kaiseki dinner Toshi's mom treated us to last night, and it was exquisite. Thank you, Hamaguchi-san!

Late for the Olympics

Decided to make my Japan Rail pass work for its money on its last day and returned to Tokyo from Kyoto via Nagano, just to see the mountain scenery (I figure it's my small contribution to balancing the number of Japanese who do the same thing in Banff). It was impressive.

Nagano is also famous for apples, apparently, given the number of apple-themed products available in the shops. You could buy four in a nicely-printed paper bag for about 10 bucks (Y880).

They were pretty big apples, though.

Hot

This is where I was immersed up to my neck at about 3:30 this afternoon.

I had taken a tiny train up into a mountain valley, hiked up and over a ridge that prominently featured towering cypress trees, stands of golden yew and autumnally coloured maples with leaves the size of kitten paws. I wound past mountain shrines, down through a vermilion-painted temple complex and into another valley, to the townlet of Kuruma. I followed its single twisting one-lane road that runs just above the the gushing stream at the valley bottom, ultimately to revive my tired and not-so-fresh-feeling body in this ridiculously tranquil hot spring.

Tomorrow: Back to Tokyo, the long way.

It's the second impressions that are really the lasting ones

My first monkey sighting in the wild happened today, and was extremely brief. I was trying to figure out how to overtake a couple with three small children shambling their way up a narrow mountain trail and there it was, a red-faced monkey nimbly scampering along a tree branch below us, coming to take a closer look. Interesting, I thought. Cute!

These thoughts lasted for about two seconds, after which time a thundering, crashing noise of branches breaking and leaves thrashing about came from above. This noise was complemented by a completely uninhibited howling-screaming-growling banshee-like sort of noise, all emanating from a much, much larger version of the same monkey hurtling and leaping down the hillside at full speed. This was my second sighting of a monkey in the wild, and was infinitely more interesting.

After chasing away the first monkey, flashing its ample red bottom in the process, it turned back to us and made for what was apparently its true coveted object. This was the boy, about age six I'd say. I'm not sure why, but it could have been the neon pink knapsack. To his credit, the terrified child did not completely freak out, instead making a hasty strategic move behind his father, and after a bit of chess-like manoeuvering (picture very, very fast chess) the monkey gave up and sulked off.

This occurred in the Arashiyama Monkipaaku Iwatayama, which I'll just call The Monkey Park. It's like a game reserve for monkeys, except rangers feed them from a central station so they kind of hang around. After this introduction, however, it was pretty smooth sailing, and I have to say, watching baby monkeys' rough-and-tumble play is pretty darn cute. It's just like on the nature programmes, really, except you can't turn them off, you just have to decide when you're going to walk away and probably never get to see this again.

Anyway the best thing about The Monkey Park is that by the feeding station, there's a cage where the more cautious (which I can now say with confidence includes recently charged-at six-year-olds) can watch the monkeys from safety. The monkeys, of course, are crawling all over the cage, checking out the contents. This made for a fabulous sight, take my word on it. This is how all zoos should be, in my opinion, with the humans in the cages and the animals on the outside.

Temple fatigue

Okay, by about noon today I'd had enough temples for a while, and spent some time just drifting around downtown Kyoto. Then, this evening, I decided to see a movie. I'll spare you the story of how challenging it was to find out where the cinemas are and what's playing, and cut to the most interesting parts.

1: It cost me nearly $22 just for the ticket.

2: People who bought snacks got them served in deep trays shaped like exclamation points. The dot was a little deeper and fit in the cup holder at the end of the armrest; the stroke sat on top of the armrest. After the movie, people dutifully brought them back out to the lobby, where workers thanked them as they took them back and slotted them neatly into stacked tray holders on wheels.

Oh, the movie was This Is It, about Michael Jackson's almost-concert. Pretty interesting, I do admire him somewhat. Strange though to see a concert movie that featured no audience, though.

I have met my nemesis and it is made of bacon and potato

Walking past a typical Japanese hole-in-the-wall McDonald's (makudonarudo), I saw a picture on the menu board outside that looked like one of their apple pies. However, this one was labelled neatly, in English, "bacon potato pie". And I thought, I must have one.


I went inside and tried to order, but if I understand correctly, one is not able to buy one of these treasures on its own, only as part of some sort of meal package. I couldn't quite figure it out, but I said, basically, okay, I'll take it. Apparently this was not good enough as several other decisions were requested on my part, but it was totally unclear to me what they were. Eventually I just had to walk out, annoyed and humbled. I noted that a long queue had formed behind me.

Failure to muster sufficient resources to order an item off a McDonald's menu has got to be one of the lowest points of my adult life.

White heron on the outside, samurai on the inside

Himeji castle. It's big. It's white. It's old. It has holes in the wall for you to pour boiling oil out onto your attackers. And now I've been there, right up to the tippy top.