In Italy the Communists have met & decided they’re not Communists
They’re gonna change their name to be more appealing to the Socialists and the Greens
But for the time being they’re calling themselves simply The Thing
The Thing! Personally, I’m planning to vote for -- the Thing
For the time being For the time being
There’s nothing left anymore except for the time being
You live your whole life for the time being
While meanwhile -- there is no meanwhile
Bob Holman, "1990"
Apparently, the road to DC goes through Texas.
After an agonizing month of waiting, American University finally got back to Joel with an admissions decision. Well, that's not entirely correct - they got back to Joel, but not with an admissions decision. He has been wait-listed. After sending out a smattering of acceptances during the second week of March, their admissions panel has been dragging their feet while applicants wait and fret and tear their hair out (at least, that's what it sounds like from the grad school forums that Joel has been perusing). Meanwhile, UT'S LBJ school has already returned with a financial aid offer (including some grant money - woo!), so it seems that the question of where we will be going has been answered for us, at least in the short term.
Unfortunately, I still do not have a job.
Up until yesterday, I had been applying to vacancies in both Austin and DC like mad. Now that Joel has decided he is going to UT, I can focus my efforts on Texas, but I will need to cast a wider net and start applying for jobs in Houston as well. If I can't get a position in Austin, I can always live with my family in Houston. I always swore I would never move back in with my parents, and the prospect of only seeing my husband on weekends is unsavory at best, but it is a financial net zero, at least. And on the flipside, my mother will be over the moon.
However, there is now another opportunity/complication in the works. On a whim, I applied for a position with the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps back in February (many thanks to my super-organized mother-in-law, who collected all of the materials and mailed them off for me). For those of you who don't know, the PHSCC is one of the (apparently) seven uniformed services of the US government, which - along with the NOAA Commissioned Corps - consists only of commissioned officers and is a non-combatant service (so my mother doesn't freak out). They got back to me last week, requesting an in-depth medical exam, which my friend (who currently works for them) tells me is a good sign. If I pass the interview stage, I'll be professionally boarded and commissioned once I get a federal position. I have already started training for the physical fitness test (in case you missed it, I am terrible at pushups) and will need to schedule my medical evaluation when I get back stateside. The catch, of course, is that there are no available positions in Austin or Houston, so I will probably wind up taking a position in DC, since that is where Joel will find work after he finishes his degree anyway. Either way, it is looking increasingly likely that we will be separated soon, and may have to spend a year or two living apart. Pooh.
For the most part, though, I am just glad that we have some sense of direction now. The anxiety of not knowing where we were going was really getting under my skin.
Meanwhile, we have been enjoying our quiet life here on the outskirts of Rome. Some days we stay in; on others, we go sightseeing. Yesterday, we went to St. Paul's Outside the Wall, one of four major basilicas in Rome (and, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful). We have been to the Borghese and Barberini art galleries, plus a modern art gallery on this side of town, and a handful of churches and basilicas and public parks. The weather has been lovely, and all the trees and flowers are in full bloom. The only thing our spring is missing is cherry blossoms, but I say the wisteria makes up for it.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Re-discovering Yin and Yang in the West/Re-descobrindo equilíbrio no ocidente
Quite a while ago, I prayed a novena to Saint Rita, and my petition was granted. One of the conditions of the novena is that you must publish it if your request is granted. Recently I remembered this, so I am publishing the fact that my petition was granted.
Joel and I have been in Rome for about ten days now.
Now that all the dust has settled, things are looking a lot better. Both my phone and Joel's ring have been recovered. I still maintain that I knew it was in his bag the whole time, since he had it the night before and didn't leave the house with it, but he was without it until our third or fourth day here. After a few days lounging around this fabulous apartment, we finally took all of our dirty laundry to a laundromat by the train station and cleaned it. The next day , I pulled the clean clothes out of our backpacks and began folding my laundry to put into the dresser in our room. After emptying Joel's pack, I turned his backpack upside-down to empty it, and suddenly there it was. I stared at it in disbelief for a moment, lying there on the bed next to a rumpled undershirt. And then I began to laugh, kind of like a crazy woman.
Getting my phone back was more straightforward. The day after we landed in Milan, I e-mailed the lost and found department (the "fundbuero") at the Frankfurt airport, describing what my phone (and charger, and converter box) looked like and precisely where we'd lost it. They responded asking for the passcode to verify, and then responded promptly that they'd found it and requested an address to send it back to me. After filling out a simple shipping form, I got my beloved Galaxy S2 back for the bargain price of 32,70 euro.
I think our time in Italy will be a nice interval between leaving the Orient and going home. We very conveniently stumbled into an Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Bartholomew's Cathedral in Frankfurt, and then looked around the church after the service. It was beautiful, but Joel and I both agreed that it was extremely weird to walk around on a wooden floor without first taking off our shoes. I have particularly enjoyed returning to Rome and being able to wander into random basilicas (they are everywhere here) or see paintings and sculptures of saints whose stories I know and can actively relate to. Moving from passive observer to active participant in places of worship is a fascinating transition, but more than anything I am grateful to be in a place where I don't feel so incredibly distant from my own faith. Objectively, I know that God is omnipresent and Christ is always with me, but it was harder to keep that in mind in Japan, where every tree, statue, and mirror is an object of worship.
Speaking of divine providence, Joel and I scored a really sweet deal here in Rome. After our reservation in Venice fell through, we scrambled to find another place to stay and eventually settled on a much cheaper arrangement in Rome. The listing on AirBnB described it as a room in an Italian couple's house, which was not at all what we had envisioned, but we stood to save some money, so we bit the bullet and just took it. When we arrived from Canazei, however, we discovered - to our delight - that we would have a separate apartment, shared only with an older Argentine woman who mostly keeps to herself (and occasionally does our dishes). Definitely for the best, since the couple has a newborn and two noisy dogs!
The apartment is spacious and gorgeous - fifteen-foot ceilings, a massive library of old hardcover books in the living room, a four-fixture bathroom, and a small balcony with a view of the Tiber river. The weather has been perfect - nothing but sunny days, and we don't need our jackets anymore. The neighborhood is a suburb on the north side of the city, near the Villa Borghese. There is a massive pedestrian bridge just down the street where I can work out in the evenings, and we are close to public transportation.
It's an idyllic space for us to be in limbo. When we are not sightseeing, I quell my anxiety about finding a job by trolling job search websites and obsessively editing my resume. (I think I have updated the resume I sent to USAID six times.) Meanwhile, Joel checks his e-mail constantly as he waits for an admission decision from American University in DC. I am applying to jobs in both places, but it only makes sense to apply for government positions this far ahead of time; meanwhile, I am freaking out over the fact that I will be home in less than four weeks and we still have no idea what city we are moving to. But life goes on. We mailed our tax return off yesterday. Joel's bank card got eaten by an ATM. We buy groceries, we cook, we watch TV and eat gelato and drink coffee and wine.
I suppose there are worse places to be.
Joel and I have been in Rome for about ten days now.
Now that all the dust has settled, things are looking a lot better. Both my phone and Joel's ring have been recovered. I still maintain that I knew it was in his bag the whole time, since he had it the night before and didn't leave the house with it, but he was without it until our third or fourth day here. After a few days lounging around this fabulous apartment, we finally took all of our dirty laundry to a laundromat by the train station and cleaned it. The next day , I pulled the clean clothes out of our backpacks and began folding my laundry to put into the dresser in our room. After emptying Joel's pack, I turned his backpack upside-down to empty it, and suddenly there it was. I stared at it in disbelief for a moment, lying there on the bed next to a rumpled undershirt. And then I began to laugh, kind of like a crazy woman.
Getting my phone back was more straightforward. The day after we landed in Milan, I e-mailed the lost and found department (the "fundbuero") at the Frankfurt airport, describing what my phone (and charger, and converter box) looked like and precisely where we'd lost it. They responded asking for the passcode to verify, and then responded promptly that they'd found it and requested an address to send it back to me. After filling out a simple shipping form, I got my beloved Galaxy S2 back for the bargain price of 32,70 euro.
I think our time in Italy will be a nice interval between leaving the Orient and going home. We very conveniently stumbled into an Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Bartholomew's Cathedral in Frankfurt, and then looked around the church after the service. It was beautiful, but Joel and I both agreed that it was extremely weird to walk around on a wooden floor without first taking off our shoes. I have particularly enjoyed returning to Rome and being able to wander into random basilicas (they are everywhere here) or see paintings and sculptures of saints whose stories I know and can actively relate to. Moving from passive observer to active participant in places of worship is a fascinating transition, but more than anything I am grateful to be in a place where I don't feel so incredibly distant from my own faith. Objectively, I know that God is omnipresent and Christ is always with me, but it was harder to keep that in mind in Japan, where every tree, statue, and mirror is an object of worship.
Speaking of divine providence, Joel and I scored a really sweet deal here in Rome. After our reservation in Venice fell through, we scrambled to find another place to stay and eventually settled on a much cheaper arrangement in Rome. The listing on AirBnB described it as a room in an Italian couple's house, which was not at all what we had envisioned, but we stood to save some money, so we bit the bullet and just took it. When we arrived from Canazei, however, we discovered - to our delight - that we would have a separate apartment, shared only with an older Argentine woman who mostly keeps to herself (and occasionally does our dishes). Definitely for the best, since the couple has a newborn and two noisy dogs!
The apartment is spacious and gorgeous - fifteen-foot ceilings, a massive library of old hardcover books in the living room, a four-fixture bathroom, and a small balcony with a view of the Tiber river. The weather has been perfect - nothing but sunny days, and we don't need our jackets anymore. The neighborhood is a suburb on the north side of the city, near the Villa Borghese. There is a massive pedestrian bridge just down the street where I can work out in the evenings, and we are close to public transportation.
It's an idyllic space for us to be in limbo. When we are not sightseeing, I quell my anxiety about finding a job by trolling job search websites and obsessively editing my resume. (I think I have updated the resume I sent to USAID six times.) Meanwhile, Joel checks his e-mail constantly as he waits for an admission decision from American University in DC. I am applying to jobs in both places, but it only makes sense to apply for government positions this far ahead of time; meanwhile, I am freaking out over the fact that I will be home in less than four weeks and we still have no idea what city we are moving to. But life goes on. We mailed our tax return off yesterday. Joel's bank card got eaten by an ATM. We buy groceries, we cook, we watch TV and eat gelato and drink coffee and wine.
I suppose there are worse places to be.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Skiing in Paradise, Part Two: Regression to Snow Bunny
Our first attempt at the Sella Ronda (going clockwise) ended in a very expensive cab ride after we took a wrong turn down a black run, which I finished by sliding down the mountain on my ass. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The Sella Ronda is a 42-km ski circuit going around the Sella massif. It is a collection of lifts and runs that can be taken either clockwise (the "orange" route) or counter-clockwise (the "green" route) through four valleys and three provinces.
Oops.
Day Three, Monday: Disaster
We started our journey at about 8:30 after an unsuccessful battle with the hotel's crappy internet. Joel was anxious at our late start because (as you can tell from the map), once you start and get far enough along, you are in a sticky spot if you can't finish by the time the lifts stop running around 5. Unlike Korea, Italy does not do night skiing. Once again, I was slow getting started, but by mid-morning I was doing okay. We were slightly behind schedule at lunch, since we'd only done about one third of the route, but we were optimistic that we'd be able to pick up the pace after a quick meal and be back in Canazei by five.
And then we got lost.
There are signs indicating the route for both Sella directions, but at some points it can be confusing to figure out which lift you are supposed to take to move on. Joel is a much better navigator, so I let him try to sort it out and I just followed...until, after battling down a hideously steep slope and wondering why something so difficult was on a supposedly intermediate route, I noticed the black signs and skidded to a stop.
"Joel!" I shouted. "This is a black run!"
"I know!"
"What do you mean, you know?!"
"We took a wrong turn somewhere!"
"What?!!" I slipped down the slope some more and fell over. Joel squinted grimly in the sun.
"We're lost. I got confused back there and took us on an alternate route. We have to finish this one and then I can get us back on track."
"Are you crazy?" I shrieked. "I can't ski down a black run!"
"Yes, you can," he insisted gently. "We have to."
"You don't understand! I can't!" And then, right there in the snow, I began to cry.
Somehow I got back on my feet and began to battle my way down. I am not ashamed to admit that it was extremely rough. I looked absolutely ridiculous, but about halfway through I gained some semblance of momentum and did something that looked like real skiing...so I suppose I can now say that I have actually skied on black runs. But as the sun beat down on us, it also melted the snow, and soon I noticed that everyone else was struggling, too. When I got to the final stretch and saw everyone falling down as they battled through the slush, the last of my courage evaporated. I watched Joel stumble and, for possibly the first time in my whole life, gave up on something completely. "Ai, foda-se," I muttered to myself in Portuguese. "Vou não."
I took off my skis, unlooped my poles from my wrists, and proceeded to slide down the slope - on my ass. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Joel shout, "Are you serious?!" but at that point nothing mattered. I giggled at the sheer absurdity of it, imagining how ridiculous I must have looked to the dozens of skiiers on either side of me.
At one point, a German speaking woman approached me and kindly made an unintelligible suggestion in German. Through a series of gestures I figured out that she was offering to take my skis down for me. "Okay, va bene," I said. Upon seeing her confusion, I switched from Italian to the ten words in German that I know. "Ist gut," I assured her. She nodded, took the skis, and took off. "Danke!" I shouted after her.
"Bitte!" she replied.
I walked/slid the rest of the way down and finally found Joel, who had ordered two coffees for us at a restaurant at the base of the slope. We made our way back to the slope, wondering if we could somehow finish the circuit in time, but after failing three times to get on a chairlift and struggling down a bunny slope, I knew it was over. We jumped into a cab and took a very scenic (and ridiculously expensive) ride back to our hotel in Canazei. In silence, we put up our gear and hobbled back to the room.
I know when I am beaten, but somehow it didn't take the edge off of the defeat. I collapsed into bed and sobbed.
Bitterly, I marveled at how I could have been so pathetic at something that, strictly speaking, I wasn't even all that bad at. I kicked myself for letting memories of learning feed my fears and insecurity. I hated myself for letting my fear of heights paralyze me. I writhed in self-pity on the soft down comforter of the bed in our four-star hotel. Joel handed me a glass of grappa and put a gentle hand on my back. "Jessica," he said gently, "let me tell you a story." I sat up.
"When I came here the first time and took lessons, it snowed the night between our first and second days. The first day I did alright on the bunny slope, but there was six inches of powder on the slopes the next morning - which is great if you're experienced, but really hard if you're a beginner, because you sink into it. I struggled all day, and at the end we were supposed to do that run down to Pecol - you know the one, with the really steep bit at the very end. I didn't finish."
I sniffed. "You couldn't do it?"
He shook his head. "I was terrible. I couldn't turn correctly, I kept falling down, and at the end I looked down that slope and just knew that I was going to die." He smiled.
I stared at the amber-colored liquor. "And you still came back?"
"Yeah. I was determined to come back and try again." He stroked my hair and smiled. "I know you can do this - we can even get you more lessons back home, so you can work on overcoming what you're afraid of. You'll get better. It just takes practice."
Day Four, Tuesday: Success, of Sorts
We started off the last day with more modest goals: to do a portion of the Sella going in the opposite direction, and then to turn around at lunch and make our way back the way we came. Despite a slightly later start, we made good time and decided to forge ahead. By lunch, we were halfway around, so we decided to try to push through, reasoning that we could always take another scenic (and expensive) cab ride home if it didn't work out. We continued at a decent pace, however, and finally made the full circuit. I was exhausted by the end - my legs simply would not obey me, and I probably slid pizza-style through the entire last kilometer - but somehow I finished.
That trip was probably enough skiing to last me for the rest of the year.
The Sella Ronda is a 42-km ski circuit going around the Sella massif. It is a collection of lifts and runs that can be taken either clockwise (the "orange" route) or counter-clockwise (the "green" route) through four valleys and three provinces.
 |
| The ski route. |
 |
| Sella mountain, courtesy of Wikipedia. |
The entire route is supposed to be either easy or intermediate in both directions, so we chose the clockwise orange route at random. I didn't learn until later that, while they are approximately the same length, the orange route is considered "sportier and higher altitude," while the green route is slightly gentler.
Oops.
Day Three, Monday: Disaster
We started our journey at about 8:30 after an unsuccessful battle with the hotel's crappy internet. Joel was anxious at our late start because (as you can tell from the map), once you start and get far enough along, you are in a sticky spot if you can't finish by the time the lifts stop running around 5. Unlike Korea, Italy does not do night skiing. Once again, I was slow getting started, but by mid-morning I was doing okay. We were slightly behind schedule at lunch, since we'd only done about one third of the route, but we were optimistic that we'd be able to pick up the pace after a quick meal and be back in Canazei by five.
And then we got lost.
There are signs indicating the route for both Sella directions, but at some points it can be confusing to figure out which lift you are supposed to take to move on. Joel is a much better navigator, so I let him try to sort it out and I just followed...until, after battling down a hideously steep slope and wondering why something so difficult was on a supposedly intermediate route, I noticed the black signs and skidded to a stop.
"Joel!" I shouted. "This is a black run!"
"I know!"
"What do you mean, you know?!"
"We took a wrong turn somewhere!"
"What?!!" I slipped down the slope some more and fell over. Joel squinted grimly in the sun.
"We're lost. I got confused back there and took us on an alternate route. We have to finish this one and then I can get us back on track."
"Are you crazy?" I shrieked. "I can't ski down a black run!"
"Yes, you can," he insisted gently. "We have to."
"You don't understand! I can't!" And then, right there in the snow, I began to cry.
Somehow I got back on my feet and began to battle my way down. I am not ashamed to admit that it was extremely rough. I looked absolutely ridiculous, but about halfway through I gained some semblance of momentum and did something that looked like real skiing...so I suppose I can now say that I have actually skied on black runs. But as the sun beat down on us, it also melted the snow, and soon I noticed that everyone else was struggling, too. When I got to the final stretch and saw everyone falling down as they battled through the slush, the last of my courage evaporated. I watched Joel stumble and, for possibly the first time in my whole life, gave up on something completely. "Ai, foda-se," I muttered to myself in Portuguese. "Vou não."
I took off my skis, unlooped my poles from my wrists, and proceeded to slide down the slope - on my ass. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Joel shout, "Are you serious?!" but at that point nothing mattered. I giggled at the sheer absurdity of it, imagining how ridiculous I must have looked to the dozens of skiiers on either side of me.
At one point, a German speaking woman approached me and kindly made an unintelligible suggestion in German. Through a series of gestures I figured out that she was offering to take my skis down for me. "Okay, va bene," I said. Upon seeing her confusion, I switched from Italian to the ten words in German that I know. "Ist gut," I assured her. She nodded, took the skis, and took off. "Danke!" I shouted after her.
"Bitte!" she replied.
I walked/slid the rest of the way down and finally found Joel, who had ordered two coffees for us at a restaurant at the base of the slope. We made our way back to the slope, wondering if we could somehow finish the circuit in time, but after failing three times to get on a chairlift and struggling down a bunny slope, I knew it was over. We jumped into a cab and took a very scenic (and ridiculously expensive) ride back to our hotel in Canazei. In silence, we put up our gear and hobbled back to the room.
I know when I am beaten, but somehow it didn't take the edge off of the defeat. I collapsed into bed and sobbed.
Bitterly, I marveled at how I could have been so pathetic at something that, strictly speaking, I wasn't even all that bad at. I kicked myself for letting memories of learning feed my fears and insecurity. I hated myself for letting my fear of heights paralyze me. I writhed in self-pity on the soft down comforter of the bed in our four-star hotel. Joel handed me a glass of grappa and put a gentle hand on my back. "Jessica," he said gently, "let me tell you a story." I sat up.
"When I came here the first time and took lessons, it snowed the night between our first and second days. The first day I did alright on the bunny slope, but there was six inches of powder on the slopes the next morning - which is great if you're experienced, but really hard if you're a beginner, because you sink into it. I struggled all day, and at the end we were supposed to do that run down to Pecol - you know the one, with the really steep bit at the very end. I didn't finish."
I sniffed. "You couldn't do it?"
He shook his head. "I was terrible. I couldn't turn correctly, I kept falling down, and at the end I looked down that slope and just knew that I was going to die." He smiled.
I stared at the amber-colored liquor. "And you still came back?"
"Yeah. I was determined to come back and try again." He stroked my hair and smiled. "I know you can do this - we can even get you more lessons back home, so you can work on overcoming what you're afraid of. You'll get better. It just takes practice."
Day Four, Tuesday: Success, of Sorts
We started off the last day with more modest goals: to do a portion of the Sella going in the opposite direction, and then to turn around at lunch and make our way back the way we came. Despite a slightly later start, we made good time and decided to forge ahead. By lunch, we were halfway around, so we decided to try to push through, reasoning that we could always take another scenic (and expensive) cab ride home if it didn't work out. We continued at a decent pace, however, and finally made the full circuit. I was exhausted by the end - my legs simply would not obey me, and I probably slid pizza-style through the entire last kilometer - but somehow I finished.
That trip was probably enough skiing to last me for the rest of the year.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Skiing in Paradise, Part One: A Shaky, but Optimistic, Beginning
While we were bumming around Gwangju in January, we went up to Muju with some of our friends for a weekend of skiing. We were a mix of ski levels: some (like our friend from New Hampshire and the tall gyopo brothers) were well seasoned, Joel and I were intermediate skiiers, and a couple were beginners. Our Saffa host had never been on a pair of skis in his life but decided to just wing it and hope for the best, reasoning that his surfing experience would help him with his sense of balance (or something). Always ready with a sexist joke to get under my skin, he made some quip about all women essentially being snow bunnies, resulting in me verbally assaulting him into embarrassment.
Little did I know that I would soon regress into snow bunny status less than two months later.
As a Texas woman (and the child of a Brazilian woman who generally hates travel) and someone who generally spurns "rich sports," I never dreamed that I would stand on a pair of skis until Joel insisted that it was the greatest thing ever and I must try it. He learned during his study abroad in Italy in 2006, when his whimsical Italian professor decided that taking three days off from class to ski was a good idea. Joel raved about how fun it was to ski and how amazing the resort was, so we first went to Croce Bianca in Canazei in the winter of 2012. We scheduled lessons with an instructor at one of the local ski schools, a cheerful Italian man who couldn't quite get Joel's name right (he called him "John" until the very end) but insisted that all we needed to become expert skiiers was to "gain the confidence." He was also highly amused at how I would giggle like a five-year-old every time I lost my balance and wiped out. "One hundred points!" he would shout in that delightful Italian accent.
After learning that winter in the Dolomites, we skied twice more in Korea, which I now realize has much shorter and easier slopes than here in Italy. At any rate, I was able to practice my technique and, of course, gain the confidence, eventually braving some of the more challenging (read: scarier) intermediate slopes. Generally speaking, I have always had an edge on Joel (probably just because I am more active and flexible), but he tried the advanced slopes at Muju a couple of times, so we were super pumped to get our ski on in Italy. We decided that after a few days of warming up on the some of the more familiar slopes, we attempt to ski the whole Sella Ronda in one day.
Our favorite hotel is a four-star resort in the quaint alpine village of Canazei, which is nestled in a valley called Val di Fassa. It is a veritable mountain paradise, with cedar paneling inside the rooms, a fabulous spa, and an amazing restaurant with the world's most charismatic Maître D', Alberto. It is by no means cheap, but Joel knew as soon as we began our teaching contracts that he wanted to spend part of the post-contract vacation here, so we booked five nights in the hotel and planned for four days of skiing. We checked in with no problems and congratulated ourselves at arriving despite the myriad difficulties discussed in my last blog post. Dinner, wine, sleep, repeat.
Day One, Saturday: Warm-Up on Belvedere
Our first day went really well. Belvedere is a nice area with lots of gentle slopes, so after a few minutes of pizza turns (as I remembered how to stand on my skis), I had a great first day. Joel was a little stiffer, but eventually he loosened up and we had a great couple of longer runs after lunch, despite the fact that the lower slopes pretty much turn into slushees around 2 p.m. this late in the season. We called it a day at about that time and hit Croce Bianca's glorious spa around 3. Dinner, wine, sleep, repeat.
Day Two, Sunday: A Shaky Start on Ciampac and a Sprained Thumb
Flashback to 2012: The day after we had our ski lessons, we went to an area called Ciampac (pronounced cham-pack) to practice what we'd learned. The lift up the main slope stops in two places: first about halfway up the slope, then at the top. The first stop only lasts for a few seconds, though, so if you miss it, you have to go up to the top and ski down. As you might have guessed, we missed that stop during one of our runs and had to go all the way up...and then chickened out at the top, which meant we had to ride the chair lift down.
Naturally, that image, burned into my memory, bubbled straight to the surface when Joel told me we were headed to Ciampac on Saturday and were going to start the day going down from the top of the lift. I begged him to let me do my first one from halfway up, but then (just like in 2012) I missed my chance to get off the lift and found myself, insides roiling, at the top of the slope. I eyed the way down in terror as skiers and boarders swept past me on either side, trying to screw up my nerve long after Joel began his descent.
This would become a recurring theme throughout the rest of the trip.
On the first run down, I fell four times, twice losing my skis and once bending my thumb so far backwards that the pain (and the frustration) drove me to tears. I somehow made it down and yelled some things I don't remember at Joel, probably something about not listening to me or letting me start off slowly or something. The morning got better after I did the run a couple more times, twice from the halfway point and once more from the top (with no trouble the second time), so we grabbed lunch and decided to take a different route back in the afternoon.
After lunch, I fell again (in the slush this time) and bent the same thumb backwards again. It was painful, but I don't really need my thumb for skiing (besides my deathlike grip on my poles), so I still finished out the day okay. Yay for my first legitimate ski injury, or something. We got back to the hotel and discussed plans to complete the Sella Ronda circuit the next day. Dinner, wine, sleep, repeat.
Little did I know what lay in store for me.
Little did I know that I would soon regress into snow bunny status less than two months later.
As a Texas woman (and the child of a Brazilian woman who generally hates travel) and someone who generally spurns "rich sports," I never dreamed that I would stand on a pair of skis until Joel insisted that it was the greatest thing ever and I must try it. He learned during his study abroad in Italy in 2006, when his whimsical Italian professor decided that taking three days off from class to ski was a good idea. Joel raved about how fun it was to ski and how amazing the resort was, so we first went to Croce Bianca in Canazei in the winter of 2012. We scheduled lessons with an instructor at one of the local ski schools, a cheerful Italian man who couldn't quite get Joel's name right (he called him "John" until the very end) but insisted that all we needed to become expert skiiers was to "gain the confidence." He was also highly amused at how I would giggle like a five-year-old every time I lost my balance and wiped out. "One hundred points!" he would shout in that delightful Italian accent.
 |
| The hotel. |
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| Joel's vision of paradise: forested, snow-covered mountains. |
Our favorite hotel is a four-star resort in the quaint alpine village of Canazei, which is nestled in a valley called Val di Fassa. It is a veritable mountain paradise, with cedar paneling inside the rooms, a fabulous spa, and an amazing restaurant with the world's most charismatic Maître D', Alberto. It is by no means cheap, but Joel knew as soon as we began our teaching contracts that he wanted to spend part of the post-contract vacation here, so we booked five nights in the hotel and planned for four days of skiing. We checked in with no problems and congratulated ourselves at arriving despite the myriad difficulties discussed in my last blog post. Dinner, wine, sleep, repeat.
Day One, Saturday: Warm-Up on Belvedere
Our first day went really well. Belvedere is a nice area with lots of gentle slopes, so after a few minutes of pizza turns (as I remembered how to stand on my skis), I had a great first day. Joel was a little stiffer, but eventually he loosened up and we had a great couple of longer runs after lunch, despite the fact that the lower slopes pretty much turn into slushees around 2 p.m. this late in the season. We called it a day at about that time and hit Croce Bianca's glorious spa around 3. Dinner, wine, sleep, repeat.
Day Two, Sunday: A Shaky Start on Ciampac and a Sprained Thumb
Flashback to 2012: The day after we had our ski lessons, we went to an area called Ciampac (pronounced cham-pack) to practice what we'd learned. The lift up the main slope stops in two places: first about halfway up the slope, then at the top. The first stop only lasts for a few seconds, though, so if you miss it, you have to go up to the top and ski down. As you might have guessed, we missed that stop during one of our runs and had to go all the way up...and then chickened out at the top, which meant we had to ride the chair lift down.
Naturally, that image, burned into my memory, bubbled straight to the surface when Joel told me we were headed to Ciampac on Saturday and were going to start the day going down from the top of the lift. I begged him to let me do my first one from halfway up, but then (just like in 2012) I missed my chance to get off the lift and found myself, insides roiling, at the top of the slope. I eyed the way down in terror as skiers and boarders swept past me on either side, trying to screw up my nerve long after Joel began his descent.
This would become a recurring theme throughout the rest of the trip.
On the first run down, I fell four times, twice losing my skis and once bending my thumb so far backwards that the pain (and the frustration) drove me to tears. I somehow made it down and yelled some things I don't remember at Joel, probably something about not listening to me or letting me start off slowly or something. The morning got better after I did the run a couple more times, twice from the halfway point and once more from the top (with no trouble the second time), so we grabbed lunch and decided to take a different route back in the afternoon.
After lunch, I fell again (in the slush this time) and bent the same thumb backwards again. It was painful, but I don't really need my thumb for skiing (besides my deathlike grip on my poles), so I still finished out the day okay. Yay for my first legitimate ski injury, or something. We got back to the hotel and discussed plans to complete the Sella Ronda circuit the next day. Dinner, wine, sleep, repeat.
Little did I know what lay in store for me.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
A Series of Unfortunate Events, Travel Edition: The Ugly Side of Wanderlust
Welcome to my travel nightmare.
Since leaving Kyoto, Joel has lost his Aggie ring, we missed our bus to Tokyo, one of our flights was cancelled (without us being notified), our apartment in Venice was cancelled (with only one week's notice), and I left my phone in the Frankfurt airport. Kyoto was lovely, but we seem to have left all of our luck behind there.
Let's start at the very beginning.
Friday, February 28
After leaving Kyoto, our plan was to spend three nights in Tokyo before flying to Europe. In his extensive planning, Joel found a great deal on an all-day bus from Kyoto to Tokyo for only 5,000 yen (about $50) that left at 9:40 a.m. - early, but not impossibly so. We did laundry, packed our bags, and talked to Joel's parents on Skype the night before, and woke up on Friday morning with plenty of time to strap on our packs and go.
And then, at ten to nine, Joel realized he couldn't find his Aggie ring.
We turned the room upside down looking for it. We took the bed apart and unpacked and re-packed all of our bags. I even checked the laundromat where we'd gone the night before, but no dice. We left our contact information with the French couple in the house in case they found it, but by the time we gave up the chase we'd missed the bus. Dejected, we headed to the train station and proceeded to take regional trains for the next twelve hours: Kyoto to Gifu, to Nagoya, to Toyohashi, to Hamamatsu, to Numatsu, to Atami, and finally to Tokyo. For about the first half of the trip, we weren't even sure we were going in the right direction, but Joel's memory of Japanese geography served us well.
I am optimistic that the ring will turn up (he had it in the house the night before and didn't take it anywhere), but we wound up spending over $150 on regional train fare, on top of the lost bus fare. The only high point of the day was discovering that Joel was accepted to the Master of Global Policy Studies at UT.
Monday, March 3
After a pleasant and uneventful three nights in Tokyo, we headed to Narita airport on Monday afternoon to begin our journey to Milan. The original itinerary was to go from Tokyo to Shanghai, fly overnight to Frankfurt after a short layover, and then take the final leg to arrive in Milan Tuesday morning. We went to check into our flight to Shanghai, where we began to get nervous as the flight attendants searched unsuccessfully for our reservation. Finally, they figured out why: that night's flight from Shanghai to Frankfurt had been cancelled, which meant that all three of our reservations had been cancelled. Naturally, we were never notified.
We explained that we were trying to get to Europe and would be willing to land anywhere in Italy or eastern Germany, and the flight attendants began frantically making phone calls to a travel agent to remake our flight arrangements. Finally, we were booked on Tuesday's overnight flight to Franfurt and a different flight to Milan on Wednesday evening. We decided to take the originally-planned flight to Shanghai and spend that night and the next day in the city, and the airline was decent enough to put us up in a hotel.
When we arrived in Shanghai, we called our hostel in Milan and explained our situation, and they agreed to modify our reservation (rather than cancel it) to stay for only two nights. Due to China's recently-relaxed visa restrictions, we were able to spend the day in Shanghai without purchasing a visa (normally $160 for Americans), which was very pleasant - we wandered around the old city center, had tea and dumplings in the famous tea house by the Yuyuan Garden, and haggled for a pair of (probably fake) elephant jade earrings.
I would love to post pictures, but all of them are on my lost phone - more on that in a minute.
Wednesday, March 5
We caught our overnight flight to Frankfurt with no problems. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that, because our bags had been checked through to Milan, we didn't have to take them through customs in Frankfurt. ("This isn't America, we do things right here," the baggage claim attendent cheerfully explained.) After some minor trouble with the train ticket machine, we went into the city center and walked around for a bit after going to an Ash Wednesday service at the Dom Cathedral. We saw a couple of churches, climbed a bell tower, grabbed a light lunch and decided to sit down for a drink to pass the last few hours until heading back to the airport for our flight to Milan. We found an Irish pub with free wifi and Joel checked his e-mail to see if he had gotten a decision from the graduate program at American University.
Instead, he found an e-mail from AirBnB saying that our month-long booking for the apartment in Venice had been cancelled - with only one week's notice.
We proceeded to spend the next two hours frantically searching for places to stay in the same price range anywhere in Italy. Joel was haggling with some Chinese guy for an apartment in Venice while searching for hotels, hostels, and other apartments/rooms there and in Rome. I asked around on Facebook - no dice. After giving up on the apartment in Venice we contacted several listings on AirBnB in Rome and got a prompt response from an Italian couple renting out a room in their house in Rome near the Villa Borghese. The reviews spoke very highly of her and her husband as hosts, and it was quite a bit cheaper than our original booking, but all those months of looking forward to an apartment of our own for a month just...vaporized.
We got to airport, checked into our flight, and had an overpriced dinner of airport sandwiches. I plugged my phone in to charge at one of the free charging stations and, exhausted, dozed off in one of the uncomfortable chairs by the airport gate. Finally, we boarded our flight and headed off to Milan. We arrived, grabbed our bags, and hopped on the bus into the city center, where we planned to catch the subway to our hostel. We got off the bus, only to find that the subway stations were unexpectedly closed - at 9:30 p.m. Dejected and irritated, we got in the massive taxi line and proceeded to wait another 40 minutes until we got to the front of the line. I reached into my backpack to check the time on my phone.
It was then that I realized that I had left it charging in the Frankfurt airport.
I felt the last of my energy and optimism ebb away. The Galaxy S2 smartphone - the gift from my boisterous and exceptionally helpful Korean priest, with two years' worth of messages from friends and family, not to mention all of our pictures from Tokyo and Shanghai and Frankfurt - was just gone. All those years I spent resisting the urge to get a smart device for fear of having my entire life on it, and I finally fell into the trap I always told myself I would avoid.
By the time we made it to our shady-as-hell hostel in Milan (which, in a slight silver lining, gave us a private room when we had booked beds in a mixed dorm), I wanted nothing more than to sleep off what had become a five-day bad dream. There was no soap at all in the bathroom anyway, so I couldn't shower. I stripped off my clothes and collapsed into bed, taking refuge in dreamless sleep.
By the time we found shampoo yesterday afternoon, I hadn't showered for three days.
I am trying to be hopeful that our lost items will turn up. There are only two places Joel's ring could be: in the house in Kyoto, or buried in our stuff somewhere. The Frankfurt airport has a lost-and-found department, and if anyone can track down my stuff in an airport, it is the Germans. But sometimes lost things stay lost, and my love of travel and adventure may soon become one of them. I know that our situation could be so much worse. I know that things can always be replaced, and that we shouldn't be terribly attached to them anyway. I know that even the best-laid plans of mice and men can come unravelled, and that we should be flexible and grateful that we were able to save a little bit of money. But I hate it when carefully-made plans, which are designed to ensure that things go smoothly, go to waste...and I have also discovered that I hate moving to a new place every day or couple of days. Also, I hate not bathing every day.
Apparently, the nomadic life is not for me.
Update: They found my phone at the Frankfurt airport and will ship it to me, for a fee. Huzzah!
Since leaving Kyoto, Joel has lost his Aggie ring, we missed our bus to Tokyo, one of our flights was cancelled (without us being notified), our apartment in Venice was cancelled (with only one week's notice), and I left my phone in the Frankfurt airport. Kyoto was lovely, but we seem to have left all of our luck behind there.
Let's start at the very beginning.
Friday, February 28
After leaving Kyoto, our plan was to spend three nights in Tokyo before flying to Europe. In his extensive planning, Joel found a great deal on an all-day bus from Kyoto to Tokyo for only 5,000 yen (about $50) that left at 9:40 a.m. - early, but not impossibly so. We did laundry, packed our bags, and talked to Joel's parents on Skype the night before, and woke up on Friday morning with plenty of time to strap on our packs and go.
And then, at ten to nine, Joel realized he couldn't find his Aggie ring.
We turned the room upside down looking for it. We took the bed apart and unpacked and re-packed all of our bags. I even checked the laundromat where we'd gone the night before, but no dice. We left our contact information with the French couple in the house in case they found it, but by the time we gave up the chase we'd missed the bus. Dejected, we headed to the train station and proceeded to take regional trains for the next twelve hours: Kyoto to Gifu, to Nagoya, to Toyohashi, to Hamamatsu, to Numatsu, to Atami, and finally to Tokyo. For about the first half of the trip, we weren't even sure we were going in the right direction, but Joel's memory of Japanese geography served us well.
I am optimistic that the ring will turn up (he had it in the house the night before and didn't take it anywhere), but we wound up spending over $150 on regional train fare, on top of the lost bus fare. The only high point of the day was discovering that Joel was accepted to the Master of Global Policy Studies at UT.
Monday, March 3
After a pleasant and uneventful three nights in Tokyo, we headed to Narita airport on Monday afternoon to begin our journey to Milan. The original itinerary was to go from Tokyo to Shanghai, fly overnight to Frankfurt after a short layover, and then take the final leg to arrive in Milan Tuesday morning. We went to check into our flight to Shanghai, where we began to get nervous as the flight attendants searched unsuccessfully for our reservation. Finally, they figured out why: that night's flight from Shanghai to Frankfurt had been cancelled, which meant that all three of our reservations had been cancelled. Naturally, we were never notified.
We explained that we were trying to get to Europe and would be willing to land anywhere in Italy or eastern Germany, and the flight attendants began frantically making phone calls to a travel agent to remake our flight arrangements. Finally, we were booked on Tuesday's overnight flight to Franfurt and a different flight to Milan on Wednesday evening. We decided to take the originally-planned flight to Shanghai and spend that night and the next day in the city, and the airline was decent enough to put us up in a hotel.
When we arrived in Shanghai, we called our hostel in Milan and explained our situation, and they agreed to modify our reservation (rather than cancel it) to stay for only two nights. Due to China's recently-relaxed visa restrictions, we were able to spend the day in Shanghai without purchasing a visa (normally $160 for Americans), which was very pleasant - we wandered around the old city center, had tea and dumplings in the famous tea house by the Yuyuan Garden, and haggled for a pair of (probably fake) elephant jade earrings.
I would love to post pictures, but all of them are on my lost phone - more on that in a minute.
Wednesday, March 5
We caught our overnight flight to Frankfurt with no problems. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that, because our bags had been checked through to Milan, we didn't have to take them through customs in Frankfurt. ("This isn't America, we do things right here," the baggage claim attendent cheerfully explained.) After some minor trouble with the train ticket machine, we went into the city center and walked around for a bit after going to an Ash Wednesday service at the Dom Cathedral. We saw a couple of churches, climbed a bell tower, grabbed a light lunch and decided to sit down for a drink to pass the last few hours until heading back to the airport for our flight to Milan. We found an Irish pub with free wifi and Joel checked his e-mail to see if he had gotten a decision from the graduate program at American University.
Instead, he found an e-mail from AirBnB saying that our month-long booking for the apartment in Venice had been cancelled - with only one week's notice.
We proceeded to spend the next two hours frantically searching for places to stay in the same price range anywhere in Italy. Joel was haggling with some Chinese guy for an apartment in Venice while searching for hotels, hostels, and other apartments/rooms there and in Rome. I asked around on Facebook - no dice. After giving up on the apartment in Venice we contacted several listings on AirBnB in Rome and got a prompt response from an Italian couple renting out a room in their house in Rome near the Villa Borghese. The reviews spoke very highly of her and her husband as hosts, and it was quite a bit cheaper than our original booking, but all those months of looking forward to an apartment of our own for a month just...vaporized.
We got to airport, checked into our flight, and had an overpriced dinner of airport sandwiches. I plugged my phone in to charge at one of the free charging stations and, exhausted, dozed off in one of the uncomfortable chairs by the airport gate. Finally, we boarded our flight and headed off to Milan. We arrived, grabbed our bags, and hopped on the bus into the city center, where we planned to catch the subway to our hostel. We got off the bus, only to find that the subway stations were unexpectedly closed - at 9:30 p.m. Dejected and irritated, we got in the massive taxi line and proceeded to wait another 40 minutes until we got to the front of the line. I reached into my backpack to check the time on my phone.
It was then that I realized that I had left it charging in the Frankfurt airport.
I felt the last of my energy and optimism ebb away. The Galaxy S2 smartphone - the gift from my boisterous and exceptionally helpful Korean priest, with two years' worth of messages from friends and family, not to mention all of our pictures from Tokyo and Shanghai and Frankfurt - was just gone. All those years I spent resisting the urge to get a smart device for fear of having my entire life on it, and I finally fell into the trap I always told myself I would avoid.
By the time we made it to our shady-as-hell hostel in Milan (which, in a slight silver lining, gave us a private room when we had booked beds in a mixed dorm), I wanted nothing more than to sleep off what had become a five-day bad dream. There was no soap at all in the bathroom anyway, so I couldn't shower. I stripped off my clothes and collapsed into bed, taking refuge in dreamless sleep.
By the time we found shampoo yesterday afternoon, I hadn't showered for three days.
I am trying to be hopeful that our lost items will turn up. There are only two places Joel's ring could be: in the house in Kyoto, or buried in our stuff somewhere. The Frankfurt airport has a lost-and-found department, and if anyone can track down my stuff in an airport, it is the Germans. But sometimes lost things stay lost, and my love of travel and adventure may soon become one of them. I know that our situation could be so much worse. I know that things can always be replaced, and that we shouldn't be terribly attached to them anyway. I know that even the best-laid plans of mice and men can come unravelled, and that we should be flexible and grateful that we were able to save a little bit of money. But I hate it when carefully-made plans, which are designed to ensure that things go smoothly, go to waste...and I have also discovered that I hate moving to a new place every day or couple of days. Also, I hate not bathing every day.
Apparently, the nomadic life is not for me.
Update: They found my phone at the Frankfurt airport and will ship it to me, for a fee. Huzzah!
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Bronchitis, the Moss Temple, and the Sake Museum/Bronquite, o templo de musgo, e o museu de saquê
Joel sounds like death. Well, he did. From the time we got here until today, he has been coughing and hacking and wheezing, valiantly battling this year's bout of bronchitis. My husband doesn't get sick very often, but bronchitis seems to be his ailment of choice. And when he gets it, he gets it bad, mkay? This year it came complete with a horrifying rattle that sounded like the Grim Reaper was scratching to get out of his bronchus. Lucky for him, it finally started to ease up today - which I take credit for, because I made him take not one, but two days off of sightseeing. We bummed around the house on Monday and yesterday, partially at my insistence, and it looks like it did some good (despite driving my other half halfway insane out of boredom). Hopefully he is actually on the recovery, as we have got some strenuous hikes up to the last few UNESCO temples before we leave town at the end of next week. Time sure does fly.
Tuesday, however, was the day we'd been waiting for: the day for which we had received permission to visit Saihou-ji, more commonly known as Kokedera, or the Moss Temple. Like I mentioned before, you have to apply for permission in advance, so we were really excited that we had gotten approval so quickly and were hellbent on making sure we didn't miss out, come rain or shine (or illness). We headed out of the house early and made it to the train with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately, once we got to the right part of town, there were practically no restaurants open for lunch, so we wolfed down a quick convenience store lunch and headed to the temple, barely making it there on time.
The temple only allows one visitation session per day. If you are approved for a visit, you have to participate in one of the temple worship activities (usually meditation, copying sutras, or chanting sutras), and then you have about an hour to wander through the temple grounds, including the famed moss garden. Our activity, according to the postcard, was "KITOU (to chant the sutra for your happiness and ancestry)," which entailed being rushed into a room with about fifty other visitors and taking a seat at a small calligraphy bench while the monks chanted. They started at 1 o'clock sharp, so the chanting was in full swing when we got there. We were given a pamphlet with the words to follow along, but we just sat quietly during the chanting, furtively glancing around and trying not to look too clueless.
Afterwards, we were given small wooden tablets to write our names, addresses, and a wish for the monks of the temple to pray for. The catch? All of this had to be done with an ink stone and a calligraphy brush. I got all excited to write my name and wish in Japanese but screwed up right off the bat when I started to write my name (family name first, as is the Japanese custom) on the "wish" side of the tablet. Did I panic? No way. I flipped it over, filled out my information, and then finished off the "wish" side by wishing for the Keralis family's happiness - all in Japanese.
You're welcome, Dr. K.
After finishing, we were free to walk around the temple grounds and the garden. The moss garden is fairly large, so fifty of us were quickly able to spread out, walk down the path at our own individual paces, and take pictures. Soon enough it felt (almost) like we were the only ones there.
The moss garden is truly otherworldly. According to historical accounts and records, the "garden" was originally a Zen-style garden with creatively-arranged rocks and white sand; the moss only began to grow after a flood came through and spread as the temple lost funds for upkeep. Supposedly, the arrangement of the rocks reflects the creative genius of Japanese gardener Musou Soseki. Frankly, I was too busy looking at the moss to give a whiz-bang about the rocks. There is, quite literally, moss everywhere - on the trees, the ground, the bridges, the walls, the stones. It is a quiet enclave, an ethereal glimpse into a far green country beyond white shores.
After taking our time in the garden (I think we may have been the last ones to leave), we grabbed a cup of coffee and a sweet at a local coffee shop, whose owner insist that we visit one of the other nearby since we were already in the area. I asked her which one she recommended, and she said that the Jizou-in, Bamboo Temple, was the prettiest. It was a bit expensive, and no pictures were allowed inside, but the doors were open so that you could sit and look out on the garden. Joel and I sat in silence for about half an hour and then headed home.
Since Joel was feeling better today, we headed up to see the view of the city from Kyoto tower, and then we spent the afternoon at the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum. It was smallish, which was nice for me since I tend to get bored very quickly at museums. They even had a tasting at the end and gave us two commemorative bottles of junmai! How grand.
Tuesday, however, was the day we'd been waiting for: the day for which we had received permission to visit Saihou-ji, more commonly known as Kokedera, or the Moss Temple. Like I mentioned before, you have to apply for permission in advance, so we were really excited that we had gotten approval so quickly and were hellbent on making sure we didn't miss out, come rain or shine (or illness). We headed out of the house early and made it to the train with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately, once we got to the right part of town, there were practically no restaurants open for lunch, so we wolfed down a quick convenience store lunch and headed to the temple, barely making it there on time.
The temple only allows one visitation session per day. If you are approved for a visit, you have to participate in one of the temple worship activities (usually meditation, copying sutras, or chanting sutras), and then you have about an hour to wander through the temple grounds, including the famed moss garden. Our activity, according to the postcard, was "KITOU (to chant the sutra for your happiness and ancestry)," which entailed being rushed into a room with about fifty other visitors and taking a seat at a small calligraphy bench while the monks chanted. They started at 1 o'clock sharp, so the chanting was in full swing when we got there. We were given a pamphlet with the words to follow along, but we just sat quietly during the chanting, furtively glancing around and trying not to look too clueless.
Afterwards, we were given small wooden tablets to write our names, addresses, and a wish for the monks of the temple to pray for. The catch? All of this had to be done with an ink stone and a calligraphy brush. I got all excited to write my name and wish in Japanese but screwed up right off the bat when I started to write my name (family name first, as is the Japanese custom) on the "wish" side of the tablet. Did I panic? No way. I flipped it over, filled out my information, and then finished off the "wish" side by wishing for the Keralis family's happiness - all in Japanese.
You're welcome, Dr. K.
After finishing, we were free to walk around the temple grounds and the garden. The moss garden is fairly large, so fifty of us were quickly able to spread out, walk down the path at our own individual paces, and take pictures. Soon enough it felt (almost) like we were the only ones there.
The moss garden is truly otherworldly. According to historical accounts and records, the "garden" was originally a Zen-style garden with creatively-arranged rocks and white sand; the moss only began to grow after a flood came through and spread as the temple lost funds for upkeep. Supposedly, the arrangement of the rocks reflects the creative genius of Japanese gardener Musou Soseki. Frankly, I was too busy looking at the moss to give a whiz-bang about the rocks. There is, quite literally, moss everywhere - on the trees, the ground, the bridges, the walls, the stones. It is a quiet enclave, an ethereal glimpse into a far green country beyond white shores.
After taking our time in the garden (I think we may have been the last ones to leave), we grabbed a cup of coffee and a sweet at a local coffee shop, whose owner insist that we visit one of the other nearby since we were already in the area. I asked her which one she recommended, and she said that the Jizou-in, Bamboo Temple, was the prettiest. It was a bit expensive, and no pictures were allowed inside, but the doors were open so that you could sit and look out on the garden. Joel and I sat in silence for about half an hour and then headed home.
Since Joel was feeling better today, we headed up to see the view of the city from Kyoto tower, and then we spent the afternoon at the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum. It was smallish, which was nice for me since I tend to get bored very quickly at museums. They even had a tasting at the end and gave us two commemorative bottles of junmai! How grand.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
The Golden Pavilion in Snow and the Vicious Deer of Nara Park/O Pavilhão Dourado coberto de neve e os veados viciosos de Nara
It's been a particularly busy week for us. We have been making great progress in visiting all of the UNESCO sites in the city, plus a few others that I wanted to return to from our trip in October 2012. On Wednesday we went to Uji, which is where the last part of The Tale of Genji is set, and visited two temples (one of which has the oldest original building in Japan; most have burnt down and been rebuilt at least once) and the Genji museum.
One of my favorite places that we got to go back to was Fushimi Inari Taisha, the main Inari shrine that has over 30,000 daughter shrines across the country. It is one of the oldest Shinto cults in Japan, as the goddess Inari is the patron deity of rice, agriculture, and manufacturing. Inari shrines are characterized by bright vermilion gates and statues of foxes, which are considered guardians and messengers of the shrine. If you have seen Memoirs of a Geisha, this is the shrine where Chiyo goes running through the tunnel of vermilion torii, or gates.
Anyway, we returned to the Inari shrine on Thursday and walked the entire four-kilometer path on the hill/mountain, a good portion of which is enclosed in a tunnel of the aforementioned vermilion gates.
Friday: The Golden Pavilion
On Friday, we had initially planned to go to Sentou palace, another imperial property that requires you to sign up for a tour in advance. However, I walked into the living room on Friday morning to heat water for my instant coffee and saw snow falling outside. I ran back into the room and shook Joel awake.
me: Joel! Wake up!
Joel: Mmm.
me: Dude, wake up! It's snowing!
Joel: Mum? Wha?
me: Snowing! We're going to Kinkaku-ji today!
Joel: Huh - snow? Mm. Okay.
I finished my freelance work for the morning and we dashed out the door, in a hurry to get to the Golden Pavilion before the snow turned into rain and melted away.
Rokuon-ji, ubiquitously referred to as Kinkaku-ji (the "Golden Pavilion") is one of the most famous and popular attractions in Kyoto and probably the whole country. The temple's star attraction is a pavilion covered with gold leaf on an island in the middle of a lake. The pavilion is essentially a massive tourist trap, thronged with people of all races and nationalities trying valiantly to take pictures of themselves with the golden pavilion in the background, with no one else's face or umbrella in the shot.
Despite its super-touristy nature, the pavilion is said to look its best under a coating of fresh snow, which is why Joel and I had been waiting for a snowy day to visit. Kyoto has been unseasonably warm this winter, so we were a bit nervous that we wouldn't get any at all. Luckily, fortune smiled upon us on Friday, so we grabbed a quick lunch and jumped on the bus to the pavilion. By the time we started traveling across the city, though, the temperature had started to climb above freezing, so the snow on the pavement became a nasty, muddy slush. By the time I got on the bus, my boots were half-soaked; by the time we slogged through to the temple itself, they (and my socks) were completely wet. On top of that, somehow my phone's Bluetooth function got turned on, wearing the battery down and truncating our picture-taking window (my phone won't let me take pictures once the battery level has dropped below a certain point). Still, we managed to get a couple of fantastic shots before it ran out.
Saturday: Nara
I was super excited to go to Nara while we were here in Kyoto. I was sorely disappointed at not being able to go last time (Joel was sick for that visit, too...notice a pattern?) and it is only about an hour away by train, so we decided to take the day to explore Japan's first permanent imperial capital. Nara is most famous for the Daibutsu, or giant Buddha statue (cast of bronze!), in Toudai-ji, and for the deer of Nara park. Like probably every other non-Japanese tourist that goes to Nara to feed the deer, I had Snow White-esque visions of giving cookies to shy and bashful fawns.
The brochures in Nara even tell you that the deer "bow" to ask you for the deer biscuits. My theory is that the Japanese know better because they have clips from anime episodes to warn them about what it's really like.
Anyway, we grabbed lunch at a ramen shop and headed to the park. Nara got a lot more snow that Kyoto did, and most of the park is covered in gravel, so the ground was, once again, a wet mud-slush. My tennis shoes, which I wore because my boots were still wet from the day before, were almost instantly soaked. Aside from that, walking around the park started out well enough: we wandered into a temple and, upon exiting, soon saw one of the famed Nara deer. Much like when I saw my first monkey at the Monkey Park in Arashiyama, I squealed about the deer being right there and proceeded to take a flurry of pictures. As we wandered on, we caught sight of a stand that sold shika-senbei, or "deer biscuits." After watching a Japanese woman buy a packet of them and run away as she was chased by hungry deer, I decided that I would let Joel try his hand at feeding them first.
Alas, that did not save me.
As you might have guessed, I got bitten - on the bum - as I filmed Joel feeding them. You can see that they quickly move to accost a group of Chinese tourists after Joel runs out of biscuits.
We continued to make our way toward the famed giant Buddha and soon came upon another senbei stand. This time, Joel somehow persuaded me to buy some and try to feed them myself. What followed was nowhere the saccharine Disney-like experience I had envisioned. As soon as the vendor handed me the biscuits, I was surrounded by about six deer, most of them bucks, who proceeded to headbutt me, try to stick their snouts in my jacket pockets, and bit me again on the hip. Twice. One of them nipped me so hard it left a bruise (which Joel amusingly referred to as my "deer hickey" on Facebook when we got home that night). In the end, I dropped the cookies on the ground and ran, much like poor Tsukasa in the Lucky Star video embedded above.
We dodged the rest of the deer and headed to Toudai-ji to see the massive bronze Buddha (and let me tell you, it was massive), and then made our way to Tasuga Taisha, a Shinto shrine nested in a sacred forest with a wonderland of mossy stone lanterns.
All in all, I really enjoyed Nara, but I will think twice before getting friendly with any more deer.
One of my favorite places that we got to go back to was Fushimi Inari Taisha, the main Inari shrine that has over 30,000 daughter shrines across the country. It is one of the oldest Shinto cults in Japan, as the goddess Inari is the patron deity of rice, agriculture, and manufacturing. Inari shrines are characterized by bright vermilion gates and statues of foxes, which are considered guardians and messengers of the shrine. If you have seen Memoirs of a Geisha, this is the shrine where Chiyo goes running through the tunnel of vermilion torii, or gates.
Anyway, we returned to the Inari shrine on Thursday and walked the entire four-kilometer path on the hill/mountain, a good portion of which is enclosed in a tunnel of the aforementioned vermilion gates.
Friday: The Golden Pavilion
On Friday, we had initially planned to go to Sentou palace, another imperial property that requires you to sign up for a tour in advance. However, I walked into the living room on Friday morning to heat water for my instant coffee and saw snow falling outside. I ran back into the room and shook Joel awake.
me: Joel! Wake up!
Joel: Mmm.
me: Dude, wake up! It's snowing!
Joel: Mum? Wha?
me: Snowing! We're going to Kinkaku-ji today!
Joel: Huh - snow? Mm. Okay.
I finished my freelance work for the morning and we dashed out the door, in a hurry to get to the Golden Pavilion before the snow turned into rain and melted away.
Rokuon-ji, ubiquitously referred to as Kinkaku-ji (the "Golden Pavilion") is one of the most famous and popular attractions in Kyoto and probably the whole country. The temple's star attraction is a pavilion covered with gold leaf on an island in the middle of a lake. The pavilion is essentially a massive tourist trap, thronged with people of all races and nationalities trying valiantly to take pictures of themselves with the golden pavilion in the background, with no one else's face or umbrella in the shot.
Despite its super-touristy nature, the pavilion is said to look its best under a coating of fresh snow, which is why Joel and I had been waiting for a snowy day to visit. Kyoto has been unseasonably warm this winter, so we were a bit nervous that we wouldn't get any at all. Luckily, fortune smiled upon us on Friday, so we grabbed a quick lunch and jumped on the bus to the pavilion. By the time we started traveling across the city, though, the temperature had started to climb above freezing, so the snow on the pavement became a nasty, muddy slush. By the time I got on the bus, my boots were half-soaked; by the time we slogged through to the temple itself, they (and my socks) were completely wet. On top of that, somehow my phone's Bluetooth function got turned on, wearing the battery down and truncating our picture-taking window (my phone won't let me take pictures once the battery level has dropped below a certain point). Still, we managed to get a couple of fantastic shots before it ran out.
Saturday: Nara
I was super excited to go to Nara while we were here in Kyoto. I was sorely disappointed at not being able to go last time (Joel was sick for that visit, too...notice a pattern?) and it is only about an hour away by train, so we decided to take the day to explore Japan's first permanent imperial capital. Nara is most famous for the Daibutsu, or giant Buddha statue (cast of bronze!), in Toudai-ji, and for the deer of Nara park. Like probably every other non-Japanese tourist that goes to Nara to feed the deer, I had Snow White-esque visions of giving cookies to shy and bashful fawns.
The brochures in Nara even tell you that the deer "bow" to ask you for the deer biscuits. My theory is that the Japanese know better because they have clips from anime episodes to warn them about what it's really like.
Anyway, we grabbed lunch at a ramen shop and headed to the park. Nara got a lot more snow that Kyoto did, and most of the park is covered in gravel, so the ground was, once again, a wet mud-slush. My tennis shoes, which I wore because my boots were still wet from the day before, were almost instantly soaked. Aside from that, walking around the park started out well enough: we wandered into a temple and, upon exiting, soon saw one of the famed Nara deer. Much like when I saw my first monkey at the Monkey Park in Arashiyama, I squealed about the deer being right there and proceeded to take a flurry of pictures. As we wandered on, we caught sight of a stand that sold shika-senbei, or "deer biscuits." After watching a Japanese woman buy a packet of them and run away as she was chased by hungry deer, I decided that I would let Joel try his hand at feeding them first.
Alas, that did not save me.
As you might have guessed, I got bitten - on the bum - as I filmed Joel feeding them. You can see that they quickly move to accost a group of Chinese tourists after Joel runs out of biscuits.
We continued to make our way toward the famed giant Buddha and soon came upon another senbei stand. This time, Joel somehow persuaded me to buy some and try to feed them myself. What followed was nowhere the saccharine Disney-like experience I had envisioned. As soon as the vendor handed me the biscuits, I was surrounded by about six deer, most of them bucks, who proceeded to headbutt me, try to stick their snouts in my jacket pockets, and bit me again on the hip. Twice. One of them nipped me so hard it left a bruise (which Joel amusingly referred to as my "deer hickey" on Facebook when we got home that night). In the end, I dropped the cookies on the ground and ran, much like poor Tsukasa in the Lucky Star video embedded above.
We dodged the rest of the deer and headed to Toudai-ji to see the massive bronze Buddha (and let me tell you, it was massive), and then made our way to Tasuga Taisha, a Shinto shrine nested in a sacred forest with a wonderland of mossy stone lanterns.
All in all, I really enjoyed Nara, but I will think twice before getting friendly with any more deer.
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