So I am back from my trip to Kyoto and Kobe. It was a fun trip. I was surprised to find that it was so cold there. It seems like it should be warmer, because I think of those cities as being farther south than here, but the fact is that the combination of the water and the land configurations conspire to make it much colder there than here. I took a good number of pictures, although not exactly a lot. I will post them soon (not a promise).

Kobe is a famous city because of an earthquake that they had there almost exactly 9 years ago. It was a massive earthquake and one of the most destructive in recent history. The whole city was pretty much trashed, and worldwide shipping and the Japanese economy were also screwed up pretty good. It is the earthquake that Japanese people use to talk other earthquakes. But now the city looks pretty good. They made quite a recovery actually. They left a little part of it all messed up so that you can see it, but the fact is you can't see it very much because it is so destroyed.

On the other hand, I found the people in Kobe to be really weird somehow. I still can't put a finger on how they were weird or anything though. They were just different somehow. It's not so strange that such a difference should exist, any more than it's strange for DC and New York to be different. But it surprised me that I was so readily able to perceive it. But I can't put a finger on the root of it. Something about their clothes and that way they walked around and talked and stuff like that, all the little differences.

Well, I only stayed one night in Kobe, and then after that I went to Kyoto for three days. Kyoto was really cool. Its a really big city, and the only thing to do there is visit temples and shrines. But there are so many great ones that you could literally keep going to different ones for months and they would all be great. Kinkakuji is by far the most famous, being all covered in gold and everything, and it really was as cool as they say. But for me the most interesting, if not the most photogenic, places were the smaller, less famous temples out in the mountains. The atmosphere of those places is just so great. It makes you want to stay there forever and, unfortunately, never do anything but drink tea and think for the rest of your life. Which would be nice if I could get away with it. Being an AET is pretty close, but with less thinking.

So that's about it for my trip. I will got on posting some pictures now, because I am sure that that's the interesting part anyway. But, I'm really hungry, so maybe later.