Seven Days and Counting!!

Good grief, time is zooming by quickly!!

I'm sitting here with the Christmas tree up (in all its glory) and a selection of pictures from our trip to Vienna last December flipping through as a screen-saver on the TV. Can it really be one year since then?? I look at those pictures and it really does feel like just yesterday that Liz and I were strolling down the Graben, sipping mulled wine at the Spittelberg Christmas Market, eating sausages from a street vendor, and trying our best to eat as much as we could of the MASSIVE Weinerschnitzels at the famous restaurant just down the alley from the medieval St Stephen's Cathedral. A year ago?!? Really??!?!

Well, it's now only a week or so until we go there again!!!! Holy Christmas crackers I can't wait!!
Actually, it's exactly one week now until Liz arrives here in the UAE. ONE WEEK!!!!!! So much cleaning to do. I am so excited I can't contain myself.

I'm sure, once Liz is back here, we'll be taking lots of pictures, and doing interesting things so there will be blog entries for you, but in the meantime, I sit here amazed at how fast time is passing, but still wishing it would pass just a little bit faster still until Liz gets here on Friday morning!!

seven days and counting!!!!!

Kinkaku-ji

I visited Kinkaku-ji on Saturday (along with the rest of Japan it seemed!).  Here are some of the photos I took.  I'm going to say it again - I am really proud of my photography!  I think I am starting to get the hang of it!  To read more about my visit, hop over to my other blog Liz's Scrapbook!

 

 

PS...my trips to the UAE, Austria and the US are so close I can taste them!!  And that means the end of my contract is right around the corner as well...yay!

Fushimi Inari Shrine

Have you seen Memoirs of a Geisha?  If so, then you'll remember the scene when Sayuri runs through the tunnel of orange tori gates.  That's Fushimi Inari Shrine, and I'm pretty sure it graces the covers of many Japan guide books!

I was surprised to discover that it is just 2 stops from Kyoto station.  Fushimi Inari was one of the very first places I visited in Kyoto when I came to Japan in 2007.  Of course I didn't know my way around then and I can't remember how we got there, but I do remember it felt like we were on a tiny train forever, then had to walk a mile to get there.  If you take a train from Kyoto station, it's directly accross the street from Inari Station!  Sorry Mom, Dad and Prad...if I had known it was that easy, I definitely would have taken you there!!!

As with all temples and shrines in Japan, there's an area to wash before going in to pray.  It's not mandatory, I never do it (mostly because I don't know the proper way).

The shrine is guarded by foxes - they are everywhere, glaring down at visitors who enter.

As was this menacing figure!!

In Shintoism, when you visit the shrine to pray, you must first call the Gods or Spirits (kami) by clapping and ringing a bell.  Then you pray and make your offering (Someone told me once that 5 yen is good luck).

I love seeing all of the ema that people have written their prayers and wishes on.  It's amazing how many different languages there are represented on the little wooden plaques. 

Fushimi Inari is famous for the thousands of orange tori gates covering the paths up the mountain...it really is breathtaking and a little bit surreal.  Place like these make me so thankful that I live in Japan.

 

Right? Left? Decisions, decisions...

   

 

 

The ascent up the mountain is dotted with tiny shrines...at certain places they are almost built on top of each other.  Most look so old, and the offerings and candles make them both haunting and peaceful at the same time.