Some Other Stuff

Just some more interesting pictures...

I liked the color coordinated fixed gear with a bell. I think they have brake laws here, so you need both front and rear.

Ive seen a number of people out on these bikes. They have super small wheels so look really funny. Here is a fixed and one with regular road drops, both with half sized wheels. they look so goofy!

i had something else at this place, but saw the spam cans on my way out.

cool overpasses. its a long indoor shopping mall all along underneath them.

There was a huge pokemon store in osaka, filled with moms and little kids. 

In the back of the pokemon store, there was a large crowd of kids. They all had DS's, and where battling pokemon with each other.

The hello kitty shop has really creepy mannequins

streets like these go on for ever. you can take any side street and its the same. This was in osaka in the evening. All the places are little bars and restaurants, with a few other shops. Later at night it becomes quite crowded, even with the rain. Oh and umbrellas are cool here. no one uses a rain jacket. also you want to have a simple umbrella, not a collapsable one. at the entrance to most/all store/bar/etc there is an umbrella stand, where you leave your umbrella while your inside, and pick it up on the way out.

Cemeteries

I ended up a a number of cemeteries yesterday and the day before... so here are some pics!

The first one, Adashino Nenbutsuji, is an old buddhist temple. To get to it you have to ride up this little mountain road. 

The temple is full of little stone markers, many of buddhist deities.  High priest Kukai is supposed to have buried a thousand of them on top of the cemetery. 

They add little aprons to some of the statues... im not sure why.

many of the grave stones have thin wooden sheets in front of them. Most of them have places for flowers and incense burning.

People leave stuff on the graves. The blue things are soda cans. Ive also seen sake and other beverages.

More of the little stone things. 

There was one main field like this one, and then many smaller fields of stone statues.

This was in the center of the place. You take an incense stick, and place it under that little hut.

The next pictures are from a newer cemetery. Its called Toribeno. In The Tale of Genji, its where her mother is supposed to have been buried.

The place is massive. I walked for ten minutes or so then checked gps on my phone, and i was only about a third of the way through. It has many different tiers, and runs up the side of a mountain.

Its been a cemetery since the Heian period (9th to 12 ccentury). This was just a cool grave. The stone tablet on the right is a common thing on many of the graves.

Just some more tombstones.

On the way up to the next place, i saw these odd clay statue things.

These next photos are at a war memorial. It seemed like a sort of combined place for all modern wars that japan has fought. These where paper cranes someone had hung near one of the markers.

I made a turtle friend!

View of kyoto from midway up the war memorial.

Japanese graffiti looks super cool

The war memorial had a cemetery behind it, that just sort of sprawled through the woods. Lots of the stone post markers from before, and a few larger ones like this.