Favorite Pictures From Kyoto

Here are some of my favorite pictures of the 300 or so pictures from our October Kyoto trip. IT was quite a daunting task to get through them and delete the extras. Em even accuses me of deleting some of the pictures she wanted to use, but that is bollocks I do declare.

The Kyoto tower. Seen from a high walkway over Kyoto station, reached by accident after riding 7 "terrifying" (for Em) escalators.
Also in Nara- Kasuga Shrine know for its thousands of lanterns. Really cool to see them lining every path. People donate money to the shrine and get on of these. Kinda like a donors wall.

Nijo Castle

The floors of Nijo Castle. Called nightingale floors, this metal apparatus causes the floor to creak so no one can sneak up and kill the Shogun. (The Shogun was the Military leader while the Emporer was the ultimate Divine leader. It seems this was a common power struggle for Japan. The Shogun had to live in Edo Tokyo while the Emporer lived in Kyoto, while it was the Capital. This castle is the place the Shogun stayed while visiting in Kyoto. It was filled with the most amazing wall paintings and wooden carvings on doors etc.)

Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion)

(Max's piano teacher wrote the name of this temple in Kanji in M's piano book after seeing the pics on facebook)This place was beautiful, but crowded with these fun kids. They loved seeing Gabe, who is on my shoulders right now, and then went crazy when I took out the camera.

The Gion-the district of the Geisha. I was among a group of paparazzi waiting out on this street to catch a glimpse of a geisha unfortunately I didn't see any before we went to see a show where two did perform a dance.

In Nara city is the Todaiji Temple, which houses the largest Bronze Buddha in the world and boy is he big.

This is also where the attack of the "tame" deer happened.
This one was Em's. I was trying to get a good shot but failed. Good work Em!
On the last day we went to Kiyomizu-dera, another Buddhist temple. This was the final thing I wanted to see. It was also in the same district where all the famous Kyotoware, ceramics that proved to be out of our price range. As well as the home of one of the most famous Kyoto potters. Em toured the house while the boys and I played Simon says in the little neighborhoods streets.
The wooden balcony is famous for being built of only wood. Ice cream of course.

Notice the Kyoto tower to the right of the pagoda. I liked having the modern tower with the ancient one.

Put Christ into X-Mas

I was waiting for Max to finish his piano lesson one evening and saw a schedule on a white board. It was a group's meeting schedule. On it was a meeting for a X-mas party. So I wiped the X with my finger and wrote in Christ.

So there!!!!

Ever since being a little kid, no I not still a little kid Em, I have hated seeing X-Mas. The first time I remember seeing it was a sign on I-80 in Fairfield for X-Mas Trees. Ever since I cringe each time I see Christ's name abbreviated as an X. It it the perfect symbol for how far our society is from the true worship of Christ on Christmas.

Well, have a good Christmas, a happy x-ikah, a happy X-zaa, and a merry festivus for the rest of us!

Primary Program

Sunday we had our primary program. It was awesome.

It was filled with equal parts humor, tragedy, drama, and of course some spirituality.

Naturally you had the little boy up there waving at his parents in the back of the chapel the whole time. Then there is the kid who does the drive by with his line: not stopping at the podium, but rather his voice starts out low as he approaches the mic and then then is unintelligible as he brushes by it with his lips and then fades out as he passes. The kid who seems to give his part in a foreign language (this is the majority of them) and one where only every other word is a real word. Those who forgot their lines and then there are the kids who know their line perfectly. Those who have an adorable voice. The little kid who surprises you by knowing his part and saying it clearly at the correct distance from the microphone. The most classic of all was showcased by Max at the beginning.

It was the song "I lived in Heaven." The primary chorister arranged it so that Max and two other 7/8 year old boys to sing the second verse. They were positioned in front of the podium and had even been correctly instructed in how/when to raise and lower the microphone for the second verse. I was seated in the back with the two babies (see Em's blog for explanation as the the acquisition of a second baby, yes Gabe is still a baby.) So I couldn't really see Max up front. Then the music started and there was Max's beautiful monotonic voice singing directly into the mic twice to three times as loud as all the other kids. Everyone was smiling and giggling as they looked backward at me. It got really hot in there for a while as I tried not to laugh at it too. It was very funny. He sounded wonderful though and knew all the words to the song. Eventually the microphone was repositioned but he was still near it and continued to out do the other kids.

It was a great program, spiritual as well as entertaining. I made me miss teaching primary while I listened to all those kids singing about Jesus and eternal families. Children are great.

Veteran's Day

We went bowling today because the weather was as gloomy as Em's bowling. Usually she is a good to great bowler, but today she was a little off. We are attributing it to the fetus. We went with our good friends. We had two lanes of kids and one for the adults. I finsihed the game with a Turkey to take the lead! My first one! Alas, the combined spouse score wasn't enough to be the H's and we bought the milkshakes. =(

Em and I also got to go on a date to see "Julie and Julia." No Wes it wasn't my idea and I didn't enjoy it. (I actually did like it but don't tell my friends, I just like cooking and Meryl Streep did such a good job I forgot it was her so I enjoyed it.) (I don't like Meryl Streep). It was funny sitting next to two vegetarians while watching them cook so much meat and debone ducks.


Oh Yeah! We also watched and quoted THREE AMIGOS!!!!!!!!! True Story.

The Ride to the Post Office with Sam

Dad after dinner after the Alley's leave can we pwease pwease pwease play Lego Star Wars?

No, I have a meeting tonight with the Branch President.

Oh yeah. He sucks.*

Why?

One time at the Halloween Party he spanked my bootie. For no reason.

Was he kidding?

No.

I think he was.

TRICKED YOU!! HA HA HA HA

(then a minute later)

Tricking is supposed to happen!

-----
Quote 2

Dad when you went to Jerusalem did you pray and then Jesus came down and you saw him?

No, but I did pray and feel the Holy Ghost.

Well you were more faithful than us.


*Emily would like to state for the record that she does not say "sucks" in front of children.

The longest Day of my life...Or how to get from Fairfield toTokyo

On Tuesday morning I awoke ready to head to the SF international airport (SFO). I had buffered in a lot of time at each step of the trip, driving, traffic, bridge, rental car return, Airtrain to terminal, checking in, security. The only thing I didn't buffer for was the TCCOR 3. Turns out that the typhon that hit Japan, and caused Emily to have to move the trampoline, came to play with the bay area. I began to trip balancing between hurrying to the airport and hydroplanning. This became academic once I hit the halfway point and couldn't go much faster than a bannana slug. So I listened to liberal public radio and didn't stress since NPR kept telling me that the the average time for delays at SFO was over 2.5 hours. One 4 lane stretch of the freeway was reported to be flooded with only one lane passable. By the time I got there they had luckily drained it and the traffic began to move again. (That was about 3 miles from SFO). So I had buffered two hours for the drive and it took close to 3.

Anyway I got to the United Checkin counter and the lady asked if she could help me. It was 11am and the flight leaves at 11:30. "I'm really late for my flight to Tokyo." "Yes", she said, "come over here and lets see what we can do." Turns out that delay stuff didn't apply to my flight. She was super kind and helpful and got me on the 1:30 flight which luckily wasn't sold out and had an exit row seat available. At least this way I got to have lunch there and buy Em her Boudin sourdough bread round for her clam chowder I bought her at Boudin's at the Wharf. (She loved it.)

Made it onto the plane just fine and we taxied out. Then we sat at the runway for 2 hours!!! There was too strong a cross wind for the plane to take off. I guess the trampoline really was in danger if this mammoth 777 couldn't handle it! Luckily there was a nice Japanese stewardess (Ai) sitting near me. But the delay allowed some guy to come and sit next to me invading the little bit of heaven I had in my emergency row by myself. Due to this inconvienience the stewardess and her collegues treated me extremely nice the whole time. Offered me champagne at the end, extra snackes a whole bottle of water instead of just a cup and a little bag of comfort from 1st class. United was very kind to me that day. This long trip was fine since the people around me were nice. Thank you Ai and other ladies who helped me.

Once in Tokyo, Narita Airport, I took the 1.5 hours bus ride, on the Friendly Airport Limousine, (If you call a bus a limo does it make it more comfortable), to the Haneda Airport and spent the night in a smoking Hotel Room. Not happy about that one. The next day I flew up to Misawa with no untoward events and was reunited gleefully by my family. The boys gave me the three best hugs!

*Quick Airline Review for International Travel: Delta has the best in-flight entertainment, United was good, Northwest not too bad, American Airlines was not so nice.

5K for Fae

I did the Misawa Air Base Breast Cancer Awareness 5K! I got my best time at 21:02.
(The route was allegedly 400m short, but who is counting)