*note: the post below this one is newer. I started it before this one and I don't know how to change the date of its publishing... we now return to our regular program...

Missed photo opportunities of the last few days:

A Honda Goldwing bike (big touring bike) covered with flashing lights and playing loud music, being ridden by a middle-aged guy wearing a CHiPs-style Helmet. So that's what Eric Estrada's up to these days. (If you're too young to know who I'm talking about, then boo to you).

A fully chromed dumptruck. Fwoar! Many work trucks here are big and shiny with chromed panels, but this one was completely chromed. They also have very aggressive sounding exhaust systems and extended front bumpers. The crazy, moving neon light show trucks, or decotora, are sadly very rarely seen... well, by me, anyway.

3 Woodytown wagonists hanging tough beside their vans, all white. Yes, that's right - the bad boys of Woodytown! One Estima was about an inch off the ground and had at least 8 LCD televisions all showing the same images. What a waste of money... but kind of cool - the van itself looked unreal. Ok, this time I admit I had my camera in my bag, but would you really want to be seen taking flash photos of the Woodytown Massive?

Well, tomorrow a million photo ops are awaiting. I'm heading to Kyoto to see the autumn leaves which are peaking right now. It's raining at the moment and forecast for tomorrow, but with a hiatus forecast from late morning until 6pm, just when I plan to be there. I'm madly trying to plan my itinerary - there are so many temples and shrines to see. Anyway, what am I doing writing this here? I am currently blog-addicted, if you hadn't noticed. Sorry to be so convinced of my own interestingness...

HOTRODDING HIROSHIMA

Last time I wrote about missed photos of automotive oddities (see above... the website is posting these two out of order because I started creating this post earlier). Below are some shots I'm really glad I got. We are back in Hiroshima this issue. I stayed in a complex meant for students, but if you have a foreign passport they allow you to stay there. The room you get is basically a hotel room, half price. Sweet! It's also on the same delta between 2 rivers as the A-bomb peace park, so it's only a short walk away. I went out in search of dinner when I happened upon some beautiful creatures sitting kerbside...

A ratrod 1935 Ford Pickup and a 1929 Ford 2Door. Incredible. How cool is the slanted front grill, covering the number plate?

Works of art. The shop they come from is called Pumpkin Sally in Kanagawa. This thing has been pieced together from all sorts of makes and models. The body was sourced from the US, and then chopped and dropped into the stance you see here - a one-of-a-kind nostalgic speed machine. If you want to see pictures of it being made, check out the flash slideshow on the shop's site: www.pumpkinsally.com . They were were en route to a meet in Kyushu - the southernmost of the 4 main islands.

I was picking my jaw off the footpath. Nice pipes - who needs mufflers? How sexy are whitewall tyres!? And semi-gloss black paint! Ah!!! This one is called Heaven's Door.

This is the kat responsible. Tsuyoshi Sato. When I tried to speak to him in Japanese he said "Ah, English, please". When he asked me how long I'd been in Japan and I replied 1 year he agreed that I needed to study harder! haha. I mentioned my favourite magazines here and Sato-san said that they would soon feature the black Ford 2door. Lo and behold, next issues, there they were. And there were pictures of them at the Kyushu Hot Rides meet too. Earlier in the month, Heaven's Door ran a 14.65 second quarter mile at a speed trial - not bad for a car made from scratch using old tech know-how. These guys were looking for a place to stay, so not long after I spoke to them I heard the rods start up and drive past - awesome sounding cars - so raw.

(Click here if you want to hear what they sound like: http://www.vanpeltsales.com/FH_web/flathead_home.htm )

I continued on after having some ramen (Chinese style noodles) and into the peace park. I crossed one of the rivers and stood before a familiar landmark, although it was presented anew in the eerie wash of night lights...

It is strange to think that had you been there 62 years before, on August 6 at 8:15am, that you would have been vaporised in an instant. The museum gives you a very gritty picture of how it was at that terrible moment - the science of it and then the horror of what immediately and much later followed it. Some stories are heartrending. In less than a second from a nucleus of a single atom a reaction caused a fireball hotter than the surface of the sun to engulf everything within hundreds of metres. Beyond that was the shockwave, the violent wind resulting from air rushing back into the vacuum left by the blast, radiation and secondary fires. Standing there I couldn't imagine it and still can't. It's the sort of thing that you expect to feel when you're there, but it's too much to try and process. I somehow found it more surreal to see a street-car stop called Genbaku Domu-mae (A-bomb dome).

Hiroshima Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall, it's former name, was the only thing left standing at Ground Zero, and for hundreds and hundreds of metres around. The bomb went off 580 metres up in the sky to increase the effect of devastation, but because this building was beneath the blast the force was mainly downward, so many of its walls survived. The dome did too, but you can see the deformity of the metal braces, resulting from the intense heat of the blast.

The building, built in 1915, must have been quite grand in its day.

At night it takes on a more tomblike appearance, although even at 11:30pm there's life around it. It's a peaceful place - I recorded the sounds of people passing by, a couple of friends practising a song with a guitar, the river flowing idly by.

Below ground in the park is a memorial hall - kind of an ecumenical shrine, I guess. The image on the walls is a 360 degree panorama of Hiroshima just after the blast, made up of 140,000 tiles - roughly one tile for each life taken.

An impressively explicit context is given for the dropping of the bomb in this memorial. You won't find such things expressed in Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, that's for sure!

Well said.

A wall of screens show the images of those claimed by the bomb. It was a very hard task to work out who was killed as government records were, along with everything else around, obliterated. Above are just some of those killed with the family name Takeda.

This mound contains the ashes of 70,000 unidentified people.

Life and death for those on the outskirts of the blast were miserable. Many must have wished they had been at the centre of it, rather than endure the pain of burns, radiation sickness and disfigurement.

Bottles melted by the bomb.

Sorry for the morbid details. Life goes on in Hiroshima. It's a beautiful city - I like it a lot.

Is it ironic that it was just near the hypocentre of the bomb blast that I should meet some prime Japanese examples of American kar kulture fanaticism? Nah! (Nice touch with the Rising Sun battleflag on the Pickup. I think Sato-san knew what he was doing there).

Japan, on the whole, looks to America with loving eyes.

The local baseball heroes are called Hiroshima Carp! I caught these guys (just with my camera, that is) in a pond downtown.

This would have to be the wackiest location I've seen for a shrine so far! Not exactly one for the travel brochures. Yes, the city has been rebuilt!

Okay, that's it for Hiroshima from me. What next? Hmmm...

Welcome to the United States of Japan.

USJ. Well, ok, it stands for Universal Studios Japan. Caroline (from HK), Sue-yen (from Oz), Rebecca (Oscar's gf from the UK) and I went to USJ (how's that for over-use of acronyms). Sue and Caroline are in the picture, Rebecca got accidentally deleted!

Shrek and Fiona were there along with a horde of others. I took a day off work, so it was a Thursday - I can't imagine how the crowds would be on a weekend.

Is that Shmoo from the Herculoids!? (You know what I'm talking 'bout, right Mark Andersen?) No... just a stylish patron.

Kitty and Daniel were there to say happy birthday (tanjoubi omedeto!) to all the little tykes who had them that month. These cats and the Hello Kittymobile were the only evidence you that were in Japan. Well, aside from the many Japanese people, Japanese signs and announcements... apart from that, it was very much a big slice of Americana...

I've never been to America, but do I need to now!? All that was missing from this scene was the Manhattan skyline in the background.

Oh, and 10 million Americans or whatever it is in New York and traffic and skyscrapers and hotdogs and real culture and... ok, it's a stretch to say I've experienced New York... But maybe it's as close as I'll get without leaving Osaka! haha

In little dioramas like this I can understand the Stars and Stripes. But the myriad of them at the front gates to the whole place is a bit much. It looks a bit like the entrance to a temple of the Cult of America. I may have hit on something there. Anyway, I admit... it's good fun.

How cool are these things? I'd love to eat some real American grease in a real one, one day.

I groaned at the sound of a Halloween parade, but it was pretty impressive. The pumpkins were especially good.

Yes, I enjoyed the pumpkins.

There were some very clever costumes. The choreography was also very good.

These guys were great! Very Alice in Wonderland. They'd separate and then form into a caterpillar again.

Bungee frogs.

I'm not sure what danger money the frogs were getting paid, but this guy should have been getting double. Visibility factor... not high! Dancing on the edge of the stage...

Speaking of danger, you can swim again in Amity. Jaws has been taken care of. The ride itself was more funny than anything else. The boat's driver/captain/pilot/whatever was hilarious. She had great reactions and was handy with a grenade launcher, too! Towards the end though, she kept shooting at the shark and nothing was happening. Hammy fun!

How cool is this?

I'm not sure if there's much point in posing beside a movie car you know isn't the real one, but it still must be done, right? The Delorean... The flux capacitor... drool. I'll admit that the Back to the Future ride made me feel quite sick. I'm not made of the same stuff as Marty McFly. I remember as a kid wanting to be him. I wanted his jacket, his hair, his black pick-up truck with yellow fog lights and his girlfriend. Haha!

The Dark Lord himself. But no, not USJ. Back to school! This is Satoshi, who won my prize for best costume during Halloween week.

I'll give ye a taste of me blade. Here I am doing what I've been dreaming of doing for about a year now (just kidding!). We have a soon-to-be-headless-Hideki, a pirate, a ghost, Lord Vader and a kid dressed as a Yusuke who's really bored and way too cool for dress-ups. I think the last outfit was the most convincing.

Now here are some good sports! My manager Risa-san, and teachers Akiko-sensei and Takako-sensei.

Shiver me timbers! It's a wolfman. Awoooooooo!

This is Kimika, the heartbreaker. Well, she breaks my heart, anyway. Maybe I should say she destroys my lesson, but she's a good kid. She can act like you're the best of friends and then turn around and do the whole I-hate-teacher routine. Outside of class she's really cool, but inside she's a bit of a terror. sigh... I will really miss her.

Well keel-haul me and call me a barnacle if it isn't the calendar shot of the month. Look at those cheeks. That cute pose. Now look at the little girl! This is Tamaki. She is awesome. So smart. So happy. So helpful. So willing to repeat everything you say. Wear that crown! Her mum made the dress.

This girl scares me. She is heaps more mature than me. More organised than me. More disciplined than me. Not hard, I hear you say. Nanoka dances 5 nights a week. She doesn't go to juku (cram school), like most kids her age, but she's advanced. She is very patient with teacher!

The girl standing is my youngest student. She just turned 3. Her little sister also came along in her best dress. Too bad I made them walk the plank. Way too cute.

One last Halloween shot. The pumpkins have made way for Christmas paraphenalia. I'm bracing myself for the coming silly season of busyness (yearly tests followed by Christmas lessons) and freezingness, so I've been posting a lot of spam while I can. Til next time...

I wrote before that crawling into my loft to sleep has a bit of a spaceman feel to it. That's nothing compared to the capsule experience. Yes, I gave the capsule hotel thing a try. The perspective in the photo above looks a bit Picasso-ish because it's about 5 different photos stitched together. I needed a wide angle lens to take in my tiny surroundings properly. The striped part is just a light cloth screen covering the opening where you climb in and out, so sounds easily travel in and out of the capsules. I had my hand over the speaker on my camera to muffle the tell-tale click (I can't read a lot of the onscreen instructions on my camera, so I don't know how to turn the sound off). Everyone else in the place seemed like they were regular capsule dwellers and I didn't want to be noticed as the weirdo taking photos.

I really felt like I was in a place somewhere between a hotel, the spaceship from Alien, a mortuary and a hospital. You may have gathered that I didn't exactly like it. It was depressing. From the time you pay your money and get given a velcro wristband with a locker key and barcode on it you feel sub-human. Then you walk in to the locker rooms where you find your number and open the door to swap your clothes and belongings for a yukata robe to sleep in. You're surrounded by other men (no women allowed) of various ages, but many with the look and smell of having been drinking and smoking, then having had a shower and bath. These are young guys who've planned to go out together past the time of the last trains - and the young and old who've worked late, drunk late and then found themselves a place to crash. One old guy came in with dried blood on his head and clothes. I thought, man... what am I doing here?

The place I went to was right near the various Umeda stations - the northern entry point to big city Osaka - basically the hub of the city. The hotel also had a bunch of different spas on the first few levels, with a sign saying no one with body-markings allowed - to guarantee patrons they would be in a yakuza-free zone. I admit feeling a little afraid of what I was getting into! The reason I stayed there, rather than simply going home was that I met my friend Caroline just after she arrived from the airport and I knew that after finding her hotel that I would be pressed for time getting the last train. The trip is also so expensive that I knew a caspule would cost less than going home and coming back in the morning... we were going to Kyoto the next day and it's only 30 minutes from Umeda. So the capsule hotel, being right behind Caroline's hotel, made sense. But yeah... I think once was enough!

Caroline standing on the top steps of the Kyoto Station building. It's a very modern hotch-potch of styles and shapes - some love it, some hate it. I like the space but it's not exactly convenient to navigate or commute through.

We headed for the golden pavilion - Kinkakuji, to the northwest of the city. We caught it just in time to see the sun glinting of its gilded panelling. There aren't many other things around Kinkakuji so it's a bit of a pain to get to, but it's kind of compulsory viewing if spending any real length of time in Kyoto - it's beautiful.

This is Daimonji-yama just near Kinkakuji where fires are lit to form a huge character of dai (big) during the August Obon festival. Many fires and lanterns are lit to guide spirits of the dead to their homes and then back to the hereafter, but the most celebrated are this one and the bonfires on four other mountains that surround the city, forming other large characters. And guess who started this tradition... the same Kobo Daishi that lit the fire on Misen-zan on Miyajima Island (see a few posts ago). A bit of a pyro, wasn't he?

We move now to Nijo Castle. I really enjoyed this place - it was my first time here. There's no traditional-looking tower with a castle keep - it's more of a complex of single storey buildings with incredible painted screens and ceilings - with all the cool stuff - you know, dragons, pine trees, cranes, tigers, mist etc. Highlights for me were the nightingale floors, designed to sing out a warning as you step on them and the room where the shogun sat and received visitors (with a troop of samurai armed and ready, sitting on the other side of the screen next to him!).

Another highlight was this roof.

Oh, and this gate.

And this roof...

and these bits.

We had some matcha, or green tea and a sweet served to us in a garden tea house. The tea itself is quite bitter, so the sweet goes well with it.

We had a stroll around Gion and speaking of tea - this ochaya or tea house is a famous one. I'm told that should you have the right connections to be entertained here for an evening by maiko, geisha etc, it will set you back about 1 million yen (over AU$11,000).

Another ochaya.

One of Kyoto's thousands of shrines and temples. This temple was near Gion, but I don't know its name. It's tucked inbetween shops in a busy street.

Same place.

This is part of the famous Yasaka shrine of Gion. The Gion matsuri (see post with tall wagon things going through the streets) stems from here.

I like lanterns.

From temples and lights back to tea...

Caroline and I saw this amazing set used for tea ceremony in Kobe. We were on our way to the harbour, going through an underground mall when we noticed an ikebana (flower arrangement) exhibition. The lady curating quickly invited us to sit and have tea.

The whisk is used to make powdered green tea frothy. I really like the canister thing - Japanese lacquer looks so edible!

There was nothing for sale - just kindness given. It really made our day. The tea and sweet were better than the one we'd paid 700 yen for in Kyoto and we were made to feel like honoured guests. A world apart from the capsule experience which was the start of this mini-holiday (i.e. weekend!).

I'm not sure how into flower-arrangement you are, but there were some cool designs. These were my favourites...

Well, next up is my visit to Universal Studios. Somewhere I hadn't planned on going to, but it was a lot of fun!

I went back to the local shrine for the 4th time today (I walk past it on the way to work) and took yet more photos. The leaves were another shade of orange and red and a few trees were primary yellow. Tomorrow is a national holiday (I loooovvveee November in Japan) and I'm off to see some local festivities with my mate Oscar. We're then heading back to see my friend Kazuya who lives behind in the sushi restaurant to then go sing some karaoke!

When in Rome...