At the Daibutsu site, sitting on a stone column ignoring the many people milling around him, was this dragonfly. The only sign of life in him at all was when I got very close with the camera his eyes spun around to check out what was approaching. Interestingly though, that was all he did. Perhaps he is used to cameras as a resident of a large tourist destination 🙂
Along the walk from Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu to Kaizoji Temple we passed this flower; one of many on the tree overhead. I just thought that there was something very Japanese about it, though I cannot place what it is exactly.
The Great Buddha in Kamakura, finished in 1252, was once housed in a giant hall, but that washed away in a tsunami in 1495. Now he is outdoors, and we arrived at just the right time, having hiked the Daibutsu Hiking Trail to get to him (once we found out how to get on it from our last stop at the Kaizoji temple), to catch him bathed in the soft light just before sunset. For those interested, he is 11.4 metres (or just over 37 feet) tall.
In Kamakura, while walking from the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu to Kaizoji Temple we had to wait for a train to pass. A little down the tracks somebody was having a bonfire and the train dragged the smoke from that up the tracks to the crossing. The smoke seems to give the track a somewhat ghostly appearance; if you look closely, you can also see rays of sunlight penetrating it.
At the entrance to the area that houses the Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu and the Kamakura National Treasure Museum are a couple of ponds. The one on the left as you walk in had these trees in full autumn colours as its backdrop and a line of people with cameras (and cellular phones being used as cameras) taking pictures of them.
Another hotel, another view. This one completely different from the Yokohama view! I am now in the Imperial Hotel in the heart of Tokyo (the centre of the Ginza district is just a few minutes walk from here). Earlier this week Japan’s Princess Sayako was married here at this very hotel and started her new life as a regular person (losing her royal status by marrying a commoner).
The view from my room at the Grand Intercontinental Hotel, Yokohama. I am here for the ET 2005 trade show, where I presented a seminar today.
I don’t use BART to get the airport that often, but when I do it never ceases to amaze me how badly planned it is; was it even planned I wonder, or did it just happen that they ended up at an airport? Firstly, at Lake Merritt where I got on the train there is an up escalator to the street, but not a down one so you have to carry all your luggage down the stairs into the ticket area. Next, there are still no wide barriers to allow people with luggage to pass through easily (they have these at SFO to get on and off there, but apparently it never occurred to them that people might need access with that luggage at the other end of their journey).
Once on the platform, they announce a 4 car train (at peak commute time) for the airport which arrives packed to overflowing. Squeezing onto this without luggage would have been difficult; with luggage made it no fun at all. Onboard there is no place to stow luggage of any kind, letalone suitcases; I guess people are meant to fly without luggage if they plan to use the train to get to the airport.
Finally, to add insult to injury, they then announce that there are delays getting trains into the airport. Lucky I left early (the taxi driver had another job at the same time as my pickup, so he turned up 15 minutes early and I had left plenty of time for delays having used BART before). I don’t know whether the shuttle van would have been better; probably not given that it is commute time.
Stay tuned for postings from my destination… I have my camera with me for this trip 🙂
I have been using the blue donkey logo more recently, for example he is my avatar for both the GizmoProject Forums and the Bayport Alameda Forums. So, I thought it only appropriate that he appear somewhere here on the blog. If you don’t see him in the title bar above try a full reload (normally hold down the shift key while refreshing the page).
Another two releases tomorrow: one Cove and one Pointe. The top end of the Cove now exceeds the $1M mark; the same plan was just $810,548 back in phase 1.
After tomorrow’s lottery I also have to drop by the e-waste drop off day and dispose of a couple of old monitors and a dead DVD player. If you live on Alameda, and have some old electronics to dispose of, you can dispose of them between 10am and 2pm at no cost. Just remove any batteries as they’re not accepting those.