Halloween

I would never have imagined that the Halloween with the largest deluge of candy would have happened when we lived in Japan.  We went over to our friend's house and ate way too much tasty pulled pork and home made macaroni and cheese.  We then all piled in our cars and drove to Ikego where we raided the town homes of all the people there for candy.  By the time we got there, the people were pretty burned out and they were just handing us bags of candy.  Our kids were in heaven.  They were sprinting from house to house bewildered by the fact that candy was being given to them in such abundance.  

Abby went as Dorothy, something she has been talking about for months now.  Emma went as the good witch and Sara went as the bad witch.  The boys were both Ninjas.  The best costume definitely went to Dave Hayes (the ophthalmologist) who wore his sheep skin outfit he bought in Afghanistan.  It was truly impressive. All in all, Halloween is an outstanding night of the year.  Costumes, candy, and craziness.  What could be better.

Fushimi Inari Shrine . Kyoto

Kyoto is like going to the beach in New Jersey.  At some point you ask yourself why anybody goes to the beach in Jersey.  For me, I wonder why everyone goes to Kyoto.  Kyoto is a disaster of 2 million shrines and temples peppered in this sprawling mess of city filled with buses, bikes, and endless traffic lights. OK, I know, I'm jaded because I was driving a car through Kyoto during rush hour, but Kyoto has none of the coolness of Tokyo or Osaka and all of the traffic.  In fairness, Kyoto has some amazing shrines and temples.  But at some point, you're kind of done with temples and shrines.  The golden temple is neat to see and the grounds around it are beautiful.  By far, my favorite shrine in Kyoto was the Fushimi Inari Shrine.  Reasons for awesomeness: 1) It's right off the expressway, 2) free parking, 3) Thousands of red torii gates and beautiful grounds.  I'm sold.  The tunnel of gates go all the way up the mountain and is quite the processional.  It is definitely worth the trip to Kyoto to see this shrine, and some of the other temples and shrines, but probably best to leave Kyoto as its own adventure and not tag it onto the end of a ten day tour of force through Japan.  I'll give Kyoto one more chance, next time, we're taking the train.

Himeji Castle . Himeji City

Time for the ultimate castle in Japan.  The big one, the ultimate bit of eye candy.  This is the castle on all the postcards.  We parked, we walked through the gate and onto the grounds and....what the?  The castle was under a giant building with a picture of the castle painted on the outside. It's like going to see the Lincoln Memorial and instead of seeing Lincoln, you see a tablecloth with a stick figure with a top hat draw on it. So, it was somewhat disappointing.  The castle's main keep is under renovation until 2015.  We decided to make the best of it and still go exploring, which I am glad we did.  The grounds at Himeji castle are by far the best castle grounds in all of Japan.  The castle is enormous and the grounds were so cool looking.  There were so many different mazes, moats, and walls.  The kids had a great time running around.  Fortunately, you could take an elevator to the top of the renovation building and see the roof of the castle.  It was neat to see it all so close up.  I was impressed to learn that the reason so many castles have fish tails on the roofs is to prevent them from catching on fire (didn't work in Osaka).  We also got to go inside the castle, which was pretty cool because Himeji is crazy big, crazy old, and crazy intricate.  Though it was a bummer that you couldn't get the cool view of the outside, Himeji still stands as the best castle in Japan.  Truly an incredible place.