The Kyoto visitation!

Saturday Sept.16th.... Lydia and I got up early. Miki drove us to the Higashi Murayama station and we travelled to the Tokyo station to catch a Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. While on the train, Lydia started up a conversation with the lady sitting next to her. (I had the window seat). Her name was Emiko Konishi. She's a nurse who has her PhD and also has an honourary professorship. She was on her way to Nagoya to give a speech on care for palliative patients. We started talking about the difference of approach to health care between eastern and western methods. It was very interesting. We talked about the subjectivity of pain, compassion, the culture of pain, and psycho-social factors in patient attitude and compliance. Very neat lady. Lydia thinks it was divine appointment that we met. Emiko and I ended up exchanging email addresses.

We finally arrive at Kyoto station and meet up with my cousin Barry, his wife Miwa, and son Shawn. We go for Soba noodles for lunch and then drop our stuff off at the Backpacker's hostel. We go to a really large buddhist temple and it is a long walk uphill. We saw some sort of Dragon dance going up the hill into the temple. It's really busy because it's a long weekend. The Japanese are honouring their elders this weekend. Kyoto is a very ancient city with much traditional Japanese things and practices. It used to be the captal city of Japan until about 200 years ago. The special thing about this temple was that there were no nails holding it together. I didn't like hearing that when I was standing on the most sloped part of it. It's built on the slope of hill/mountain. Another interesting fact is that the large temples here have little shrines within them for the Shintoists and the large shrines here have little temple areas within them for the Buddhists.

We bumped into a lady and her family from Australia. Charissa is Malaysian Chinese. We met because I offered to take their family photo. (That's how you can meet people around here!). I thought she might know someone related to Susan Ting. She knew a Carol Ting who is a endocrinologist. Oh well!

We went for dinner and had Izakaya. I was sooooo tired. I was having a hard time lifting my head off the table and Lydia was full of energy and hyper. Poor Lydia. I was really grumpy. I started to wake a little. Especially, after Lydia ran to get me a coke. The Japanese don't do sweet very much it seems. I was starting to understand this salty and sweet thing that Karen Bishop has with Japanese food.

After dinner we head to Kyoto tower and part ways with my family at Starbucks. Lydia doesn't have much shopping in her area. So, she convinces me to go with her to the Gap to buy pants. She buys two pairs of pants in 10 minutes. That was the most decisive I have ever been with feed back for someone. "NO! doesn't look good". "YES! Get it!". "Let's go!". We head back to the hostel for the evening. I was a little concerned because there was supposed to be a typhoon heading our way. Throughout the evening I could hear the wind pick up and occasionally was shakened awake. Another concern was that I wasn't prepared with the proper clothing for this kind of weather.