Beautiful Walks in the Nara Countryside

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, but I think I have a pretty good excuse – my wife gave birth on Monday night. I’ve been in her hometown in Nara Prefecture, and I have to say, it’s been about the best week of my life.

I was staying at her parent’s house, and every morning I’d walk about 25 minutes to the hospital to visit my wife and new son.

I can’t describe what a wonderful feeling it was to walk under the blue skies past these amazing old houses and rice fields on the way to spend the day with my wife and new baby.

This is the little guy I was going to see, my new son Matthew.

Kawadoko – Riverside Dining to Beat the Heat

Kyoto, surrounded on three sides by mountains, is known for its cold winters and hot summers. In the days before air conditioners, people devoted a lot of time and energy to beating the summer heat, and one of the things they came up with is the elegant custom of kawadoko, riverside dining.
If you walk along the Kamo-gawa River in central Kyoto, you will see a lot of restaurants with platforms built out over the side of the river where patrons go to get cool and enjoy food or drinks. Another famous place is Kibune, a tiny village north of Kyoto. There’s a long, winding river through a ravine with a lot of old, high-class Japanese inns and kawadoko restaurants.
I went there a couple of years ago, and the kawadoko restaurants were a little pricey for me, but it was a really nice place for walking and taking photos.
There are some excellent descriptions on these blogs and websites:

Gaijin Report: http://www.hotwire.jp/repo/vol4.html (general overview)
Kyoto Travel Plans: http://www.kyoto-okoshiyasu.com/en/see/kawadoko/kibune.html (restaurant list)
Secret Japan: http://www.secret-japan.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=220 (general guide to Kibune and nearby Kurama Onsen)
Kibune official site: http://kibune.jp/ (Japanese only)
Google Maps: http://www.google.co.jp/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=ja&geocode=&q=%E8%B2%B4%E8%88%B9%E3%83%90%E3%82%B9%E5%81%9C&sll=35.104392,135.767498&sspn=0.048872,0.069437&ie=UTF8&ll=35.113485,135.763378&spn=0.024433,0.034719&t=h&z=15

Getting there:
From Kyoto’s Sanjo Station, take the Keihan Honsen Tokkyuu (Limited Express) bound for Demachiyanagi Station. Change to the Eizan Dentetsu Honsen (Eizan Railway Main Line) bound for Anba. Get off at Kibune Guchi Station. It takes about 36 minutes from Sanjo Station, and the fare is 620 yen. From there, you can walk about 1.3 km or take the bus. The bus schedule is here. It’s in Japanese, but the two columns on the left are for weekdays and the two on the right are Sat., Sun., hol. (departure from Kibune Guchi on the left and return on the right) . The buses only run on weekends from around Dec. 8 until Shunbun no Hi (First day of Spring, around Mar. 20). The fare is 160 yen.

Here’s a Google Earth view of the area (click to enlarge):

Rakan Butsuzo

Some Buddhist statues are serenely beautiful. Others are terrifyingly ferocious. But every once in a while, you’ll come across a cute or funny one. Rakan Butsuzo, images of the disciples of Buddha, are often depicted pulling funny faces, with humorous features, or in bizarre poses. For more information about the bizarre statues at Otagi Nenbutsu Temple, click here.

There are more photos of Otagi Nenbutsu-ji here.

Love Hotel Car Wash

The love hotel business is a very competitive one, and they’re always trying to come up with new ways to attract customers. This love hotel in Osaka offers free carwashes to its patrons.Instead of the car moving through the car wash, the car wash moves back and forth over the car.

There’s more information about   love hotels in my new book, Love Hotels: An Inside Look at Japan’s Sexual Playgrounds. I spent years visiting love hotels around Japan, interviewing love hotel designers, owners and staff, and wading through Japanese books on sex and love hotels to bring you this book.

It’s 182 pages of information about their history, the people who design and operate them, their place in Japanese society, crime, and much, much more. There’s also a love hotel guide with information on how to get to the best hotels in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Yokohama, Sapporo, and Fukuoka.

For more information about love hotels, please visit my newly updated love hotel page at: http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/lovehotels.html

To order or find out more about the book, please visit: http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/lovehotelbookintro.htm. There’s also a smaller guidebook, with just the hotel information for 500 yen: http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/lovehotelguide.html.

There are more love hotel-related posts
here.

Tennoji Then and Now

This is Tennoji, Japan’s most famous slum district. I was amazed to see this old postcard on Old Japan Photos that shows how beautiful it once was.