Kyoto, Japan

In June I visited Japan for a work trip, and thankfully managed to have one day in Kyoto for some sightseeing.  Normally on work trips I might see the inside of a mall or video arcade for a few hours so it was really a treat to be taken around a series of temples by some of my Japanese colleagues.

So here we go... lets see how much of this I can remember, and how much Wikipedia can help pad out my storytelling.

Our first stop in Kyoto was a really nice tofu restaurant called Nanzenji Junsei, which is nearby Nanzenji Temple.  I will freely admit that I am not a massive fan of tofu normally speaking but this place made some truly amazing stuff.  I highly recommend their baked tofu.  And just because its such a fancy place they even had their own Koi pond.  Pretty right?

It feels odd to me to be starting a blog entry with pictures from a restaurant, but the place was just so pretty and traditional that I took a lot of pictures there haha.

So after a tasty lunch we first visited Nanzenji Temple, built in 1264 by Emperor Kameyama, and its site was selected because it was the Emperor's favorite place for natural beauty.
After some time the Emperor became a monk following the faith of chief priest Daiminkokushi, and so he donated his villa as a Zen temple in 1291.  (forgive the laziness I am literally copying this from the tourist pamphlet I found in my suitcase... that's what passes as research today, checking a suitcase)

In Kyoto there is a system for five great temples (Kyoto Gozan), this temple is not one of those five, instead it presides over them.  And it has since its establishment. In 1386 a new system was declared with Nanzenji at the top in its own category as "First Temple of The Land"

 These photos are at the Hattō, which is basically one of the gates.

And this very dark room was inside the Hōjō, I think

After that we went to visit a little more cheerful shrine, which also acts as a very busy marketplace and social hot spot.... this is the Fushimi Inari Shrine, which is the head shrine of Inari the kami (spirit) of foxes. Inari specifically encourages agriculture, industry, general prosperity and success.  And was the patron for sword-smiths and merchants.

This place was really vast and basically covers most of a mountain, so I thought I should include a map for your perusal.

Here you can see a Torii, these are a type of gate designed to signify that you are crossing into a sacred space.

So then why here are there lots of these gates? This is common to Inari shrines because people who have been successful in their life like to donate a Torii to thank Inari.  The name of the donator is normally inscribed on the Torii.

Once you walk through several hundred of these gates you arrive at the Inner Shrine, here you can receive various blessings, try to win wishes and there are some merchants around.

We did not explore the whole shrine since it is basically an entire mountain and we were running out of time, so then we drove to the Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion), which has the official name Rokuon-ji (Deer Garden Temple)... but I think people are just excited about the Golden Pavilion so they call it that ;)

And so they should be look how pretty that thing is!

Interesting thing about the pavilion is that it actually mixes three different architectural styles for each level: shinden, samurai and zen.

Around the pavilion are of course beautiful gardens, and a really nice walk around the pond.

And of course many opportunities to try to have a wish fulfilled (if you can aim a Japanese coin at a bowl, this may be a new career path for beer pong players)

By this stage in the day I was just taking pictures of anything pretty or hilarious... as evidenced below.

I honestly have no idea what my next post will be.... maybe I will see how many photos of a Star Trek convention I can get ;)
Update: the answer to that was about three..... and a serious hangover.


Further reading:
Nanzenji Junsei (great tofu)
Nanzenji Temple
Fushimi Inari Shrine
Torii
Inari Ōkami
Kinkaku-ji



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Buen Retiro Park - Madrid, Spain

In June I visited Madrid just for a few days as part of a work trip, unfortunately I didn't get a lot of time to see the sights.  So the one evening I had free I checked TripAdvisor (as I usually do when I only have a few hours for tourism) and settled on Retiro Park.

Sadly I only had my phone for pictures....sorry guys.

This place is breathtaking, its super energetic even approaching dusk, there is tonnes to do and see and it stretches 1.4 square kilometers.  Though the park had existed for some time already in 1561 it was redesigned to have its distinctive avenues of trees and given a more structured layout.

Beautiful gardens and ponds are basically just scattered all over the place.

The above was some type of public forum type space, this lady was performing something for a crowd that came and went as they felt like it.

I should have actually gotten a closer photo of this small lake, it was SO beautiful.

Random museums and things just scattered around the park of course, as they should be.

Oh my god The Crystal Palace, this is one of the weirdest things I have come across.
Built in 1887 by Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, it was originally designed to house a collection of plants from the Philippines as part of the General Exposition of the Philippine Islands held that year.

Now it is primarily used for various exhibitions... so imagine this if you can a wide eyed tourist Abigail wandering around a park, sees a sign for a crystal palace... and finds this weird looking building.

With ducks... And then decides to take a closer look because she can't really decide what this thing is for.

By random chance, an exhibition is currently happening so she goes inside.... what is the exhibition?
Its just a bunch of chairs.... and books.....
Congratulations you have just entered the Splendide Hotel exhibition, which is taken from a Rimbaud poem "And the Splendide Hotel was built in the chaos of ice and night of the Pole"

So what does it do? (from the pamphlet which I HAD to take just to decipher this mystery)

"several rocking chairs surrounded by books, inviting visitors to sit down and transport themselves to the worlds hidden inside the literary selection that the French artist has made for this occasion.  Authors like the Philippine Jose Rizal, Dostoyevsky, Ruben Dario, H.G Wells and Vila-Matas become companions on the voyage in time that Gonzales-Foerster encourages us to share"

It was very artistic I am sure, but also quite unnerving.

Cute pathways randomly appear throughout the park leading to yet more secret treasures, it really felt like everywhere I went was a complete theme change or another amazing curiosity.

Even the trees don't care what is expected of them.

I know this blog entry is not much, but I am actually heading back to Madrid next month so I will try to get some better pictures and maybe some more locations since I will likely be there for a week or so.

I will also post my Kyoto entry during this week I think....

Much love! Abigail

Further reading:
Retiro Park
Crystal Palace


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Barcelona, Spain

This is another relatively extreme tourism type entry, basically I was in Barcelona one week for a work conference.
While I could have made it out of the hotel more than I did, I really only spent one afternoon taking photos and being a tourist.

SO! 3.....2.....1.... lets do it... first up I went for a leisurely stroll through Barri Gòtic (the Gothic Quarter), this was basically a recommended area for anyone with an interest in old buildings, and trendy alternative type individuals sipping lattes.

As pictured here... some old buildings! And a statue of a man on a horse!

One thing I really liked in the Gothic Quarter were these cool little side streets that were super narrow... when us dirty foreigners think of Europe, this is exactly the kind of James Bond shit we are imagining!

Here is a pretty old church, the Cathedral of Santa Eulàlia, or more simply the Barcelona Cathedral... if you are a savage mouth breathing foreigner.

Then we wandered a little further to Plaça del Rei, the "Kings Square" which is a 14th century medieval public square. Inside of which is the Museu d'Història de la Ciutat, which sadly we did not have the funds or time to visit.

This was a beautiful big statue thing... the funniest part was the creepy owl on the other side of it...

That owl wants to eat your soul.....

Here we finally made it to Sagrada Família which is a famous church designed by Anton Gaudi, to be honest one of the most hideous churches I have seen in Europe, it looks like somebody consumed a lot of psiloybin mushrooms a handful of LSD and then created a church.

And next up some photos of the venue for the conferences party, at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

And a bonus pug I spotted while out and about!

Barcelona - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona
Gothic Quarter - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_G%C3%B2tic
Barcelona Cathedral - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Santa_Eul%C3%A0lia
Placa del Rei - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pla%C3%A7a_del_Rei
Sagrada Família - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia
Anton Gaudi - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Gaudi
Museu Nacional Art de Catalunya - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museu_Nacional_d%27Art_de_Catalunya

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Holi Festival, Hamburg, Germany

This weekend I was fortunate enough to attend the Holi festival in Hamburg with some friends.

And even more luckily we managed to get my camera inside, which was apparently not really allowed...

So what exactly is Holi Festival?

In Vaishnavism (a very specific form of Hinduism) there is an old story about Hiranyakashipu who was basically a demon god, who Brahama (Hindu God of Creation) had granted him a gift, that he could not be killed ""during day or night; inside the home or outside, not on earth or in the sky; neither by a man nor an animal; neither by astra nor by shastra"

As a result he got rather cocky and demanded that humans stop worshiping all other other gods and instead worship only him.  And as sons are fond of doing, his own son Prahlada openly disobeyed him and worshiped Vishnu.

And so the demon king poisoned him... naturally.  But the poison turned to sweet nectar in his sons mouth.
Then he had a herd of elephants trample him (not the greatest of fathers).... and again Prahlada survived.
Next he was locked in a room with venomous snakes... and again he lived.

So finally being the crappiest father ever, he ordered his son to sit in the lap of Holika (the demon kings sister, and the boys aunt) and they would both be burned in a pyre, but of course Holika had also been blessed by the Brahma to be immune to fire....of course..... Hiranyakashipu could have been a Bond villain his plans were so elaborate.

And so as the flames rose around them, Prahlada prayed to Vishnu, and was saved... meanwhile Holika was burned to death, apparently her powers faded when she chose to use them for evil.
You can read more about these stories in the Wiki links below... so what does all of that have to do with a drunken festival in Germany?

Ok so each year in India, they celebrate Holi, as the time of renewal and to celebrate Prahladas devotion to Vishnu.  They do this with huge fires, the throwing of the coloured powders, and general celebration.

Importantly, during the festival time many normal social expectations are relaxed for example: ages, genders, social castes, status.
This allows all of the citizens to participate and celebrate together, this is a truly beautiful thing.

So back to Germany.... why does it matter here?
Well mostly it is a great excuse to get out in the summer sun, throw a lot of colourful stuff at attractive people, and to drink quite heavily.   Unfortunately I don't believe that the majority of people who attended have any idea what it was all about.   Or that they would have cared if I had told them.

The process is simple, every hour, the participants rip open some small bags of colour and throw the powder into the air, or at their friends.  The people above wearing facemasks and bandanas are actually really sensible.  I was sick at the time with a serious cough... and it became an awful lot worse because I breathed so much colour.

The festival was truly beautiful though, I just wish I had been in slightly better health before going.

My next post will likely be Rock'n'Heim festival!

References:
Holi (English) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi
Holi (Deutsch) - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi
Hiranyakashipu (English) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiranyakashipu
Hiranyakashipu (Deutsch) - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiranyakashipu
Prahlada - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prahlada



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