Am now back from Exciting Kyoto Adventure Part the Second, which as the name suggests was quite exciting. Kyoto is just great, even when a lot of stuff is shut for New Year's. Actually got back yesterday afternoon, but I ended up staying up past the new year with some friends to watch the first dawn of 2004 and consequently didn't really feel like posting at 7:30 in the morning. This picture was taken at the Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto, and is especially jolly when compared to the one I took last time I was there.
Grammy and Michael could not have been happier when we went to the Kinkaku-ji, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Even if the entire rest of the trip to Kyoto had been a bust, it would have been necessary so that they could coo like doves over a whole building coated in gold. I'm not quite sure where the Shiny Gold Stuff gene originated in my family, but I have a strong suspicion that someone way back in my grandmother's line may have had dalliances with a magpie. Michael is a proud inheritor of this family trait, so much so that I feared there would be bloodshed over property rights to the Kinkaku-ji.
For New Year's I made a big Japanese food feast with extensive help from Alice and Owen, which ended up being pretty all right to my taste. Although I tried my hardest to go light on the cayenne, and I really believe that I barely sprinkled it on, apparently to normal taste buds eating the dish was like being attacked by thousands of Agni's angry minions, each carrying pokey poking sticks of death and bent on tearing down the fortress walls of Castle Tongue and raping and pillaging through the streets of Taste Town. I was completely taken aback by the indignant protests to this effect that my grandmother made, and can only wonder what she and other normal people would make of food that I would call spicy; doubtless they would make various hyperbolic comparisons to nuclear blasts, the core of the sun, me, or other things that are generally considered to be unbearably hot.
- Gyaa! I'm give up
Naka-ku, Hiroshima
730-0803
JAPAN
