A Long Overdue Update

A post on CNet today informed me that MS Word 2007 allows you to post easily to blogs now. I was quite shocked, for one of the reasons I've yet to update since October is the cumbersome process for making the formatting and pictures look right in blogger. With a little luck, this will enable me just write my blog rather than spend endless hours making it look proper

Enough with the technical stuff, let's move on to recent events. We've finally seen some sense of winter in Kyoto! The past week has seen three "snow events" (I hesitate to call them storms) that each delivered enough snow to stick for a few hours. The former imperial capital (Kyoto) does not completely shut down like the federal capital (Washington DC) in such a situation, but people certainly don't know what to do with snow here. No plows, no shoveling, just let the traffic on the roads keep them clear. It's a pretty effective strategy when you only get an inch or so. All the snow melts in the following 12 hours anyways.

Nonetheless, the snow last Saturday motivated me towards visiting a Buddhist temple: their architecture looks wonderful in the snow. I've been meaning to travel to 東本願寺 (Higashihonganji) and/or its sister Nishihonganji for ages, and it was awfully ironic I'd never been since they're awfully close to Kyoto Station. In fact, most tourists visit as soon as they get off the bullet train. Higashihonganji indeed looked gorgeous in the snow, as the following photograph shows. Higashihonganji is architecturally interesting because of the dial shaped thing you see in the picture: it's actually the skylight for a lecture hall underground that allows sun to shine on the podium on a nice day. It's awfully tasteful, and it's the product of a very well known architect.

I can also safely say that the snow really made Kyoto Tower look great. Looking off towards the gate at Higashihonganji, its white color really blended well with the sky and the rest of the scenery. For once 1960s modern architecture is worthwhile!

After my trip to Higashihonganji I gave up on its sister temple and headed back to Kyoto Station. I spend most of my time further north in Kyoto than Kyoto Station, so it was nice to have an opportunity to explore the area around the station itself. There's not too much of note besides the two underground shopping malls I already am familiar with, but I did get to visit the massive Bic Camera built about a year ago.

Bic Camera is a big electronics store chain, so it was a blast to play around with all sorts of fun Japanese technology. Unbeknownst to me Japanese-English electronic dictionaries now have television tuners in them (not sure if they're HD, the screen certainly looked like it could support it even if not necessary). They've built in an entrance to the JR Platforms as well, so you can literally buy a ticket and exit directly onto a train platform from the store. In case that isn't enough of a draw, they also have an alcohol section so you may buy beer to go with your big screen, Blu Ray player, or HD DVR with 500GB hard disk.

Japan really does put us to shame.