Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Image: Kokedera (Moss Shrine) in Kyoto, Japan.

So, yeah, this last week's highlight, for me at least, was the cemetery tour, which I've already featured. I did enjoy this little jaunt into Saihoji (西芳寺, Saihōji), more commonly known as Kokedera (苔寺), the Moss Shrine. It was just really pretty to walk around in. 


Image: moss, moss, and more moss!

The ema (絵馬), the little wooden prayer tokens, for this particular shrine had a cool character on them. Possibly the prince who had the building constructed? I would guess so, since that hat looks like those worn by men in the Nara Period. 


Image: cool ema from the shrine. 

I had another night where I was up in the middle of the night, so I popped onto HeyGo to see what what happening. I caught the very end of a trip to Nara Park. Nara Park is probably most famous for its deer. 


Image, a nicely labeled plum tree in Katakana (ウマ) and deer in the background. 

This park is apparently quite huge and I probably missed the best part of this tour, but that's what you get randomly waking up at 4:30 am. The plum trees were quite lovely, however.


Image: the plum blossoms of Nara Park.

Technically, I popped into a couple of other tours, but I didn't end up staying for the full thing for either of them for... no good reason that I can discern. My fascination for Japan is bottomless, but sometimes I'm just not in the mood for shaky cam or tour guides who are clearly reading off index cards.  Or, just not in the mood, if I'm honest. 

I have a whole bunch of tours planned for this week, but since many of them are cherry blossom centric, they may be cancelled. The blossoms are being stubborn this year, apparently  

Anyway, I did a bunch of cool things this weekend, including finally going through a box of envelopes I got as part of a Buy Nothing giveaway of someone's uncle's stamp collection. I am recycling a lot of envelopes and such from the late 1880s, most of which are empty, but I did find a couple of letter and other odd treasures that I will share with you all in another post. 

Until then!