May1

Even though it was raining we ventured out. We had a tour of the Imperial Palace reserved before hand and decided we’d better not miss it. Our “English” speaking tour spoke the weirdest English I have ever heard, making sure to pause a whole second before the last word of each sentence and starting each sentence in a really high squeaky voice and ending it really low sounding like a man. It was really pretty despite the rain…but I wasn’t very impressed considering it was the Imperial Palace, it was really boring and kinda plain. The grounds were REALLY pretty though and made up for the lack of BLING (as Ros would put it) of the Palace itself.

A little soggy, we kept trudging on. Next stop was Kinkaku-ji or The Golden Pavilion in English. It was originally built in 1397 to serve as a retirement villa for Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, as part of his area estate then known as Kitayama. It was his son who converted the building into a Zen temple of the Rinzai school. The temple was burned down several times during the Ōnin War. The entire pavilion except the basement floor is covered with pure gold leaf. On the roof of the pavilion is a golden fenghuang or "Chinese phoenix".

The Golden Pavilion has a Japanese garden right outside of it. There are many islands and stones on the pond that represent the Buddhist creation story…I guess it was alright but just looked like a bunch of raked rocks to me… guess I’m hard to impress.

In 1950, the temple was burned down by a mentally disturbed monk; a fictionalized version of the events is at the center of Yukio Mishima's 1956 book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. The present structure dates from 1955. I think this was my favorite temple of the billion that we saw…

May 2

My favorite place on the trip! KOBE! It was beautiful, nice weather, and right on the beach. Crossed off an item on my list of things to do before I left Japan… finally got to eat KOBE BEEF and even better it was in Kobe. It was the best steak I have ever had in my life, just like its reputation, it really does melt in your mouth.

our "band shot" --we got the picture, now all we need is the talent :)

We also went to the Earthquake Memorial down by the harbor where I met a little boy who spoke perfect English and totally blew me away with his painting of the harbor.

Kobe also has a Chinatown that we explored for a little bit... by far the cleanest Chinatown I have ever seen in my life ... it was so crowded though that we just browsed a little bit and decided to make moves to our next destination, Hiroshima.Pam and our NikuPan hedgehog dinner