Craft fair

Ayako found a craft fair that was happening at Garden Park on Saturday, so we head down there and first enjoyed a picnic in the park.

 After, we enjoyed wandering around the fair.  It was a beautiful fall day and there were hundreds of sellers from across Japan.

 I think this may have been the best craft fair that I've been to since it was free, there was a great selection of crafts and and there was lots of room to move around since it was outside.

Typhoon (#15, Roke)

September is typhoon season in Japan and we had our second big typhoon so yesterday.  This one though actually made landfall in Hamamatsu, so it was the biggest storm that I've felt here.  Luckily I didn't hear about any major damage in our area.  We had our recycling box fly down the street but that was about it.  The winds started coming from the north-east at first.  You can see the wind starting to pick up speed here:

Here's a view of our neighbour's house:

The wind got the waves going and so finally the fishing boat near our house started taking on water:

There was a calm in the storm for about 30 minutes, but then an even stronger wind came from the south-west.  It made quite the noise as is went by our house:

There were a number of boxes and containers that went flying by as well:

Luckily the fishing boat has drainage holes on the sides, so it was above water a few hours after the storm had past.

Work & play in Kyoto

I recently traveled to Kyoto for two days to attend a teaching conference about extensive reading.  There were many well-known speakers in the field attending, so it was one of the better conferences that I've been to.  

Since I was in Kyoto, I also made sure to do some sightseeing to places I hadn't visited before.  My first stop was the Kyoto Imperial Palace.  This is where the Emperor lived when Kyoto was the capital of Japan (until 1869 when the capital moved to Tokyo).

To have a tour of the palace, you need to make reservations prior to the day, although the tour is free.  It was a one-hour tour and all of the tour was from the outside of the palace buildings.  We weren't allowed to enter the buildings.  Still, the buildings and gates were very beautiful:

For lunch, I had nishin-soba (Pacific herring in buckwheat noodles in soup), which is a well-known dish of Kyoto.  Very delicious.

In the afternoon, I visited the small town of Ohara, which is just north of Kyoto.  There is a famous temple there called Sanzen-in.  The temple had wonderful wooden hallways that were nice and cool for my feet.  I've figured out that one of my favourite things is walking barefoot in quiet temples.  They also had a beautiful garden:

Outside of the temple, the ground was covered in moss and there were faces carved in rocks placed here and there.  It was very peaceful to walk around:

Here is another picture I took at the temple as well as another nearby temple: