That was a great trip...

 ... but it's nice to be home.

goodbye, airbnb

Thank you for being a good home base for us these last 2 weeks.

clearing out

Also goodbye, pigeons flirting on power lines.

Bulbuls love screaming

Lisa having left yesterday, there are now only four of us in Japan.

This post isn't about that, though. It's about the local brown-eared bulbuls who scream a lot.

I nearly lost the group on the way to Kinkakuji because this dude was wailing in a way that sounded like it was dying. I got closer and it was like "cheep bye!"

Then one day Lisa, Colin, and I were heading to 7-11 to get breakfast and instead got waylaid by the sound of:

which meant I also got to see the following exciting happenings:

Colin's Photos, Day 14 (October 7): Sushi and Akihabara

Here's my photos from day 14.

Lisa, Yuri, Andrew, Kit, and I had an extravagant 21 (?) course sushi lunch with some of the best sushi I've ever eaten. We had the full attention of our chef, Yui Oskow, over the nearly two-hour long meal, with every piece being made in front of us and explained. It was very delicious and well worth the splurge.

Later I went to Akihabara with Kit and Andrew -- it's the place to be for all manner of geeky things: electronics & computer parts, videogames, cameras, appliances, board game and trading card games, anime and manga figurines, etc. It's much the same as I remember it from 18 years ago -- visually loud, vertical, and packed with people -- but my own interests and knowledge in geek culture & computers have changed significantly since then. (For instance, I am no longer much into anime & didn't need to acquire an American keyboard this time around.)

The Return 2

Disembarking at Terminal B about 10 PM Eastern:

"Look, a Dunks! We're home!"

"No, it's closed. We'll really be home when we find an open Dunks."

moar birds

The very day I wrote up my last post about birds, we got some excellent birdwatching at the Hamarikyu Gardens. So here's birds, (mostly) water edition!

Egrets (サギ)

Merlin tells me that there are, in Japan, Great Egrets, Intermediate Egrets, and Little Egrets. I find this amusing. The difference appears to be beak color and overall size, and indeed the other day at Arashiyama in Kyoto, I did see what was probably an Intermediate and Little Egret standing next to each other.

see, one of them is littler.

At Hamarikyu Gardens the one I saw was probably an intermediate egret based on its orange beak.

The little egret near Arashiyama showed off its pretty yellow feet, and also! caught a fish!

good job buddy!

Gray Heron (アオサギ)

Also at Hamarikyu Gardens: herons. The herons were having some very loud disagreements with each other. They sound like loud, raspy, deeper-voiced, angry honking ducks.

getting the heck outta there

egret wants no part of this.

(duck does not care)

Eastern Spot-billed Duck (カルガモ)

This is probably the most common duck in Japan. They have stripey heads and a little spot on their bills, hence the name.

These ducks were hanging out in the water at Hamarikyu Gardens and then came onto shore to eat some grass.

chomp

And some more bonus birds

We mostly heard, but also did kinda get to see, a woodpecker, probably a Japanese green woodpecker (アオゲラ)! They are very loud, which we learned when one flew right in front of us in the Katsurazaka bird park.

this one was on Mt. Takao though

In my last post I noted I hadn't gotten a good picture of the white-cheeked starling (ムクドリ). Well, that very day I saw an entire flock of them land in a nearby tree at Hamarikyu and all my wishes were granted.

tree friends

ground friends

And possibly my most Aesthetic Picture(TM) of the trip so far, here's a black kite flying in front of Mt. Fuji, as seen from the peak of Mt. Takao:

The Return

Dana, Isaac, and I have landed safely in Montreal and will board our flight home shortly. We stopped for a bit of traditional airport for, Terminal X faux Irish pub fare.

Colin's Photos, Day 13 (October 6): Mt. Takao

Here's my photos from day 13, in which many of us climbed up Mt. Takao. Takao-san is the closest mountain to Tokyo, and there's a convenient train line out to it (takes roughly an hour) so it's a popular destination for both tourists and Japanese folks looking to get in a bit of nature and exercise. There's actually a paved path up to the top, and a cable car that gets you halfway there. Mary took the cable car, but Isaac, Dana, Yuri, and I decided to go along one of the more "scenic routes" that is a dirt trail that goes by a waterfall.

From the top, we had a great view of Mt. Fuji! Our third of this trip.

I'd been on three mountain hikes in three days, so Yuri and I took a slow path back down (including a suspension bridge) and got to listen to some Japanese birds -- and actually photograph them this time! There's also a great view of Tokyo from the mountain once you get closer to the cable car station.

Since three of us were leaving the next day, in the evening we got a group dinner at a restaurant in the Keio Department Store that's part of Shinjuku Station.

Colin's Photos, Day 12 (October 5): Kyoto

Here's my photos from our third day in Kyoto.

The main thing here is the Fushimi Inari shrine, which is famous for having so. many. orange. shrine. gates (aka torii in Japanese). Inari is a god of fertility, rice, agriculture, and industry who has been worshipped at this mountain (Mt. Inari) since at least 711 AD and is frequently associated with foxes, hence the large number of fox statues at this shrine.

The beginning is as packed with tourists as the Golden Temple, but the inner shrine itself is up Mt. Inari which is a legitimate mountain hike (something like 50+ flights of stairs), and the tourists definitely thin out as you get higher and higher. Isaac and I were committed to hiking the whole thing, which means I actually got some decent photos of the walls of gates without big groups of tourists. 

After that hike (which turned out to be day #2 of 3 mountain hiking, after the surprise mountain hike with Yuri the day before and the hike to Mt. Takao the next day), I was more in a mood to just go to Kyoto Station and hang out for a couple hours before we all gathered back together for our train back to Tokyo.

Colin's Photos, Day 11 (October 4): Kyoto

Here's my photos from our second day in Kyoto. We started by going to the very over-touristy but still very impressive Golden Temple, Kinkaku-ji. It's uh, very golden! ... quite ostentatious, even when compared to some of the gilded structures in Nikko's Toshogu shrine complex. It is nevertheless set in a very pretty grounds.

After that, I was feeling like some time without the press of people, so I went with Yuri to a bird sanctuary in the Kyoto suburb of Katsurazaka. Without having done much research, we kinda figured this would be an easy walk around some forests and lakes out in the (relative) countryside. It was instead basically a surprise mountain hike, on a very unmaintained trail... and the polar opposite to the Golden Temple as we saw literally only one other person in the entire two-and-a-half hours we were there!

We heard many birds, and saw a few with our eyes, but I didn't get many good camera shots because the trees were so thick. There were some great views of Kyoto from the trail, though, and we got to see some Japanese deer, which had eluded us on our previous nature hike in Nikko!

It was more intense than we expected, and we had to hurry back a bit to make it out of the sanctuary before darkness set in, but we both definitely enjoyed the experience as it was very different from all the rest of the Touristy Stuff in Kyoto.

A lunch date!

I have known for several months that my friend Deanna has been hanging out in Japan while she is between jobs.

The first night we were here, I was idly unwinding by scrolling through social media and I suddenly realized that Deanna was in Japan.  (She’s normally in California.)

So after a few conversations where we tried to figure out logistics that would work (she was traveling, I was traveling), we realized that she was going to be in Kyoto for one afternoon… and that’s when we would be in Kyoto.

And because Deanna knows everyone, she knows Colin from work, and she’s on Yuri’s Mystery Hunt team, but they’d never actually met.  And then when I asked Kit and Colin, “Hey, you know Deanna, right?” Isaac said “Wait, I think I know Deanna…” (from college.)

Everyone decided to tag along, so Deanna and her partner Noel took all of the Kyoto crew to an okonomiyaki place near the train station.

Okonomiyaki is a dish associated with the Kansai area of Japan (Kyoto, Osaka, etc.).  It's a pancake of egg, cabbage and whatever other filling you want, cooked on the table in front of you.

We had to split into two tables but we got to catch up and learn about Japanese baseball and what it's like to be a white fluent Japanese speaker living in Japan. It was a fun surprise to get to see someone from home-but-not-really on the other side of the world!