Why has no-one given me a photography award yet

Do you even see that? Do you? It's the giant torii in front of Heian Jingu (giant shrine in Kyoto made to be a 2/3rds replica of the original original Imperial palace, built in 1895, with the first Emperor to be in Kyoto, as well as the last enshrined as the resident kami), reflected in the national Museum of Modern Art. A new old thing reflected in a new new thing! If I had any academic pretension left in me I would go on at length and play around with the word reflection but I'm tired.

Other highlights: Their garden was beautiful, but posting pictures of that would only prove how good they are and not how good I am. Who wants that? Pictures of said gardens are also a dime (actually, free) a dozen on the internet. It does cost 600 yen to get in, but it was worth every yen (and it will be reimbursed by my class anyway because it was homework! yaaay). I apparently have to go back in spring, as many many of the trees are cherry blossoms that just look sort of depressing and haggard around this time of year.. it didn't manage to drag the rest of the garden down, but I can only imagine (with the help of the pictures they had up everywhere outside it) how much more beautiful it is when they are in bloom. I wanted to go toss a coin in and pray at the emperors, but the people headed up to the actual praying area looked extremely serious and there were (no kidding) security guards (this shrine is really closely tied to Japaneseness, and they take it veeery seriously. There is no funny business), and I am liable to forget the exact sequence of bowing and clapping, so I paid my respects from afar.

Not to cheapen the fact that it really was a very impressive shrine with very nice gardens, but as an interesting side note: At this locus of Traditional Japan, right outside where you could buy your way into the garden, there was basically a teaser video showing the gardens in various seasons and how pretty they were. This itself is "meeh okaay I gueess" but what really made it that special kind of "what" feeling is that, pumped in over the video, was Pachabel's canon. What? Score 10 points, Japan.



In other things I am thinking about, right near the shrine was Murin-an, the private estate of a Meiji period statesman, which we also visited. It was most impressive in the way you went from a normal city street (with a river/canal on one side, anyway) to a tiny alley with a restaruant's kitchens' back end on one side and a door on the other. The door led into a tiny courtyard with the window where they assure you there is no student discount, and next to that a tiiiny tiny door (like it's not even 'hah hah Japanese people are shorter than the average caucasian' short, it's made so everyone has to stoop down to get in). This creates basically the effect of being Alice in Wonderland, as you get transported into a garden that I liked just as much as the ones at Heian Jingu, but that was totally different. Hard to describe, but it's basically the difference between high Imperial showy gardening, and later Edo period teahouse garden minimalist aesthetic. They also lined the walls with trees, creating the sense you were in a forest clearing, not a small complex with other buildings on two sides. There was also a western-style house, with a room where the dude who owned the place talked with other dudes about the Russo-Japanese war! The garden was more interesting.

Unrelated, but going on right now, I am watching/listening to Kalinka on youtube, because I don't have an mp3 of it, and reading the youtube comments under it reminded me of why I never read youtube comments. All with major spelling/grammatical errors, three (3) denouncing "US imperialism," two (2) declaring "Socalists are murderers and the US is the best country ever," in response to the first three, and 1 declaring that "Russian girls are hot." Hooray The Internet.