The Berkeley crew went out last night for a nice dinner on the river in Kyoto (at a "Yuka" restaurant). We had kaiseki (more info here) which is expensive but good. I've never directly eaten an entire fish, very odd.

Before kaiseki, we took a tour of one of the Geisha districts with the guy that showed the "Memoirs of a Geisha" crew around in preparation for the movie (I haven't seen it yet). A great time and highly recommended tour.

After dinner, we went out to a couple of bars and met some new Japanese friends. A picture of our new friends is below.

Saw the lunar eclipse from the deck of a Yuka in Kyoto. Eclipse was at 19:00 in Japan and lasted well into 21:00. Details of the eclipse was impressive and will be posted soon. More details to come...

Eddie and I have an unspoken rule that you must be photographed with an "Ithaca is Gorges" t-shirt when visiting a foreign land. This is especially true when the foreign land does not have the best comprehension of the English language. "Ithaca is Gorges" is lost on people in the United States; try explaining it to a non-native English speaker (fun exercise). Below you'll find my obligatory "Ithaca is Gorges" t-shirt.

This picture was taken at the Fushimi-Inari shrine. The shrine is incredible, mainly because you don't know what you're getting into, and once you do, you're amazed that anyone would put so much work into it. You arrive by commuter train, walk through a small village, and then see a ton of temples. You'd think the fun would end there, amazed by temples built a thousand years ago. But no. Instead, I decide I'll take a walk through the woods. As I move further from the temples, I see some orange torii in the distance. I walk though them, taking tons of pictures, thinking they're very cool. As I keep walking, I realize that the torii don't end--they are now going up steps and seem interminable. I stop taking pictures, because at this point I'm concentrating on my health (keep in mind that it is 95+ degrees and 120% humid, and I'm walking uphill at 1pm). I keep walking for what seems forever, when I stumble upon an opening with a tea house and shop. Whew, I must have made it to the top. Nope. I'm now at the start of a loop--a loop that is about 5 or 6 kilometers long--that winds up the mountain. Walking up the loop, I see shrine after shrine on the side of the path (all still covered by torii, mind you) with graveyards to accompany each shrine. The top is about 4km from where I spotted the first torii in the distance in the woods. And this is just the beginning--I haven't talked about any of the weirdness that you encounter, such as the multitude of fox statues (who are there to dedicate the way to the god of cereal grains--yes, cereal grains) or the nifty drinking stations. I'm told that the shrine is featured in "Memoirs of a Geisha", but I've never seen it. I'm also told that some 3 million Japanese flock to the area over the 3 days that comprise the new year around Jan 1st.

Want to know more? I have a ton of additional pics to show when I get back.

Written at 8:37pm, Sunday August 26 in Kyoto.

I visited the Sanjusangen Temple today in Kyoto. It is most famous for the 1001 statues of the Buddhist deity, Jichimen-senjusengen Kanzoen, also known as "Kannon". The statues have 40 arms each (apparently one guy with 40 arms can do the same amount of work as 1000 guys with 2 arms). There were a zillion of these statues. Unfortunately, photography was not permitted inside the temple. You'll just have to come to Kyoto and see for yourself.

At the end, I purchased my fortune for ¥100. You can get a fortune anywhere from "most fortunate" to "not fortunate" which has a very deathly looking Japanese symbol associated with it. My fortune, below, is most fortunate.

The rest of the document has my fortune written out for me. You can see my fortune below. Now if only I knew what it meant... (keep reading)

(Hint: put your mouse over the fortune above)

I've been saying that alcohol is a medicine for years! Profit...How did they know I work for a startup??? The one I find amusing is the soul mate "will come." What if I was married and got this fortune? Scandalous!

Written at 5:11pm, Sunday August 26 in Kyoto.

When I was in high school, I had the choice of learning Spanish or German. I wanted to learn German. Of course, my parents felt differently. "Spanish will be a necessary skill in the United States." Sure it will. And the choice of languages that I was given at the time (I still remember this) was that my choice was "not a choice". I also wanted to learn Japanese. My rationale for German and Japanese was that both countries are high-tech leaders, and with my interest in computers, I figured that I'd need to interact with people from Germany and Japan in my life.

...Fast forward 14 years later. I've been to Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin (twice). I've been to Zurich (at least twice). And I'm now in Nagoya, heading off to Kyoto, and then Tokyo. I also visited some other countries (Poland, Italy, Czech Republic to name a few), and none of them speak Spanish. When was the only time I got to use my Spanish skills? Spring break in Cancun. Woooeee!

So then, I thought, it would be OK because certainly most things in Japan must be signposted in English too. Wrong again. The picture below is from a department store in downtown Nagoya. Yep, your guess is as good as mine.

Written at 8:30am, Sunday August 26th in Nagoya.