Taste of Asia

[shootingstar]

It was my first trip to any country in Asia.  Japan and few days in Seoul, SK.  

Yes, the subway /train ceiling handles are low enough for people abit shorter.  People do tend to be slimmer..in general. Yes, clothing choices closer to my size is far great.  For once in my life, no one would ever tell me I was skinny/too thin...because I am average there.  (But I've always known this for past few decades.)  Japan went crazy over their IFA team winning over Columbia, etc.  Replays on tv over and over.  Meanwhile CNN wrote off the Japanese team. 

Saw women carrying umbrellas to protect themselves from hot bright sun..some wore cloth arm protectors to preserve their skin/ keep skin white.  White pale skin for ethnic Japanese and Korean, is seen as beautiful in Japan and Korea.  I saw a lot of women checking their makeup or doing makeup touchups in public....which it doesn't seem to be as prevalent in North America these days.  To me, it seems North American just go to the washroom or primp in the car.  2 Korean woman sat beside me on return flight from Seoul to Canada.  They moisturized and made up their faces 3 times within a span of 10 hrs.  One of them slapped on a facial moisturizing mask or whatever for awhile.  Whatever makes one feel better on a long plane flight....

People work longer/harder hrs regularily.... a few days ago both Japanese and South Korean govn't wanted to implement no more than 100 hrs. overtime per month. That's still a lot of overtime hrs....on a regular basis. Not once a year.  Local TV broadcasters simply felt it couldn't be enforced since a business would lose clients/money and people may take work home (but that only works for office related jobs as you know).

Lots is reported in Asian press but not in the West.  Best to listen to BBC to get a better Asia flavour rather than any North American network.  

Below is a famous Shinto shrine, Fushimi-Inari with several thousand vermillion tori gates that lead up to a mini mountain summit.  We only went 2/3'rd up.  About 10 km. or less outside of Kyoto.  Dearie is walking up it. 

Seoul is amazing...it has advanced very fast in use of its technology, engineering and architecture.  

All for now. Time to catch up on sleep.

 

[BuffJim]

Enjoy your trip!!!  Did you meet up with @Prophet Zacharia ?

Eat any rice and fish heads?  What’s your next stop?  Inquiring minds want to know. My Asia travels are limited to Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and India. 

[sheep_herder]

Glad you had a Great trip.  Yes, catching upon sleep is important when returning from other time zones.

[Prophet Zacharia]

1 hour ago, shootingstar said:

Below is a famous Shinto shrine, Fushimi-Inari with several thousand vermillion tori gates that lead up to a mini mountain summit.  We only went 2/3'rd up.  About 10 km. or less outside of Kyoto.  Dearie is walking up it. 

What day were you there? We were there last Tuesday, 6/26. Made it about as far as you did before having to turn around so as to not miss our trains.

[late]

Asia Times

[shootingstar]

7 hours ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

What day were you there? We were there last Tuesday, 6/26. Made it about as far as you did before having to turn around so as to not miss our trains.

I believe we went there on the ..Jun. 26.    I've lost track of time abit and would need to check with dearie..  It was humid and hot.  Like you, we didn't want to get caught in the last trains too late with way too many people. 

We took the train out 2 days later to Arashiyama from Kyoto.  I loved it since we didn't expect beautiful gardens, Buddhist statuary,  shrine and park-hiking area by the river with high cliffs. The garden included a moss garden which one would never see in North America.  Vancouver does not have this nor Seattle/Portland...cities I am familiar with influence of Asian style gardens that are well kept and with lots of rain that would naturally encourage moss garden cultivation.  Doing moss gardening that would incorporate different types of moss that result in different green colour variations and textures would require a different training....same for Zen stone gardens with raking of patterns.  

  We were in Nara on a separate day.  Yes, the wandering free deer in the big park where there are several shrines,  do bow to people, when a person bows to them....so Japanese.

On Japan Rail trains, we did notice staff would walk up the aisles for checking etc. and would bow facing the train car of passengers, at the end of a car.  We also noticed even at a Ueno commuter train station outside in Tokyo, a bunch of young guys advocating something, not sure what it was, after they would yell out their messages, sweat pouring from their face in the hot sun, they would bow to the crowd if anyone cared to look/notice.  That struck me as quite respectful.  I didn't get the train car staff behaviour though.

Kyoto, if anyone knows, was spared from being bombed by the Americans in WWII. That's why there are so many well preserved temples and shrines, buildings.

[shootingstar]

Like any well-designed Japanese garden (if done right), take a few steps, the views change.  The ground cover...here in this photo is primarily different types of moss, not grass. In Arashiyama.  In fall, the garden would be beautiful with colour.

In summer, is to enjoy the different green variations and textures...a very different garden aesthetic.

 

[maddmaxx]

They do things besides bowing as well. They will bite if you don't pay enough attention (food) to them.  Every year there is an annual event in Nara Park where the monks catch the deer and cut off their antlers for public safety reasons.

[Prophet Zacharia]

Did you make it to Monkey Park Iwatayama?

[Prophet Zacharia]

Or any of the Bamboo forests?

[MickinMD]

21 hours ago, shootingstar said:

It was my first trip to any country in Asia.  Japan and few days in Seoul, SK.  

Yes, the subway /train ceiling handles are low enough for people a bit shorter.

Yet the front headroom on most Japanese and Korean subcompacts (Honda Fit, Hyundai Elantra, etc.) are around 41" inches while American subcompacts are typically 37"-39."

At 6'3" my head is pressed into the ceiling on the Ford Focus, etc. but there's plenty of head and leg room in my Honda Fit. Go figure!

[shootingstar]

Prophet, we  did stroll through the bamboo grove.  Didn't make it to the monkey park.

Mick, maybe Japanese think ahead in a basic way, re accommodating greater range of human shapes and height.  When one buys a small tub of yogurt from deli, in Tokyo and Kyoto, the store will often provide you with a spoon automatically.  Same for a (birthday) cake we bought for dearie from a high end bakery....we got a plastic knife with a jagged edge for easier cutting.  It maybe a knife type that not all Japanese households would own immediately.  Or maybe we got that spoon/knife because we were foreigners:  we couldn't speak Japanese.

[shootingstar]

11 hours ago, maddmaxx said:

They do things besides bowing as well. They will bite if you don't pay enough attention (food) to them.  Every year there is an annual event in Nara Park where the monks catch the deer and cut off their antlers for public safety reasons.

Um, yea, the deer can be quite assertive.  Honest I'm not really an animal person,, in terms of wanting wild animals around me.   So I gave deer a wide berth.  I didn't know about the monks' annual practice for deer!  Good idea. Gotta keep good karma going for deer.

[maddmaxx]

32 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

Um, yea, the deer can be quite assertive.  Honest I'm not really an animal person,, in terms of wanting wild animals around me.   So I gave deer a wide berth.  I didn't know about the monks' annual practice for deer!  Good idea. Gotta keep good karma going for deer.

Nara is perhaps my favorite city in Japan.  It's a smaller city and not as hectic as Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo. When it was the capital of Japan, the temples of Kofuku-Ji and Todai-ji were political powers that used their armies to determine who would or wouldn't rule Japan.  Even after the capitol moved Nara was known as the "southern capital".  In Nara you will find the deer worked into everything as they were the "messengers of the gods".

[Prophet Zacharia]

Japan being pounded now with typhoon rains.

Evacuation orders went out in some outlying parts of Kyoto, with the Kyodo news agency saying about 16,000 people were affected. Television broadcast images of the swollen waters of the Kamo River in the city center.
The heavy rains were brought by a rush of humid air from the south and the remnants of a typhoon this week.        
By Thursday afternoon, rainfall of about 457 mm (18 inches) had been recorded in some parts of the smallest main island of Shikoku over the last two days, with up to 400 mm (16 inches) more predicted in some areas in the next 24 hours.

[Wilbur]

10 hours ago, shootingstar said:

Um, yea, the deer can be quite assertive.  Honest I'm not really an animal person,, in terms of wanting wild animals around me.   So I gave deer a wide berth.  I didn't know about the monks' annual practice for deer!  Good idea. Gotta keep good karma going for deer.

Is that Deerie?   

 

Nice photos SS.  Enjoy yourself. 

[shootingstar]

1 hour ago, Wilbur said:

Is that Deerie?   

 

Nice photos SS.  Enjoy yourself. 

  He's tame like deer with his own antlers.

[shootingstar]

2 hours ago, Prophet Zacharia said:

Japan being pounded now with typhoon rains.

Evacuation orders went out in some outlying parts of Kyoto, with the Kyodo news agency saying about 16,000 people were affected. Television broadcast images of the swollen waters of the Kamo River in the city center.
The heavy rains were brought by a rush of humid air from the south and the remnants of a typhoon this week.        
By Thursday afternoon, rainfall of about 457 mm (18 inches) had been recorded in some parts of the smallest main island of Shikoku over the last two days, with up to 400 mm (16 inches) more predicted in some areas in the next 24 hours. 

Wow, scary. We're so lucky, Prophet.  We really enjoyed Kyoto...vs. Tokyo. For latter, we needed more time.

[Prophet Zacharia]

36 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

Wow, scary. We're so lucky, Prophet.  We really enjoyed Kyoto...vs. Tokyo. For latter, we needed more time.

Tokyo was a bit exhausting. Amazing, but it was a lot to take on. Kyoto was a nice change of gears. I loved our day at Enoshima, an island off Fujisawa. We were very lucky to avoid so much of the rain that was initially forecast for during our visit. We saw the Typhoon tracking while at the airport.