Tickle Monster

Back when we were in Austria I wrote about our run-ins with the sock monster (Sock Monster), but here in Japan we have a new monster - the tickle monster.
Here is a video of Myla and the tickle monster.

Stop!!........do it again :)

Kyoto

The place we are living at this year is Kyoto Japan. Kyoto is a city in the prefecture (state) of Kyoto. The population is about 1.5 million people.
For many years Kyoto was the capital of Japan before it switched to Tokyo in 1869. Because of this there are a lot of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines (Shintoism being one of the major religions here in Japan. You can learn more about Shintoism here at Wikipedia) There are 2000 temples and shrines - 1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines in Kyoto. There is probably someone that can say they have visited all of them but I just dont think we are going to be able to put a check mark next to that one and say we have done it. I don't even know where you would start. Maybe get a really fast car and try to drive past the entrance of all of them and snap a quick picture? I let you try that one - just let me know how it goes
 
One of the major industries in Kyoto is tourism. As you can imagine with that many temples and shrines and a lot of history, there is a lot to see. From where we lived last year to where we live this year we see many more foreign people and many more people with cameras around their neck. We have had the chance to go to one of the famous temples a couple weeks ago (Kiyomizu-dera) and hope to get to a couple more on our next day off. This time of year is very popular for tourism in Kyoto as the leaves are turning colors and many people make trips here to the see the temples and shrines as the leaves change colors.
We saw a magazine this summer that was 100 places to see beofre you die - I think it was from Time magazine and Kyoto was on the list.
Kyoto is also the headquarters of Nintendo, who is currently building a new headquarters building not too far from where we live. I keep asking if there will be a cool visitors center that we can go take a tour of or go see, but everyone seems to think they wont have anything like that. Bummer.
So far we like Kyoto and what we have been able to see and look forward to finding out more about this ancient city.
In 1997 it hosted a conference about green house gas emissions that was aptly named the Kyoto Protocol

Help

As you may have heard on the news, Kyoto was hit by a typhoon not too long ago and it affected a lot of people. 260,000 people were forced to evacuate and wait until the typhoon had passed.
As you can imagine a storm that had winds of over 100 mph could do some damage. In the days after the storm there were a lot of people/groups that volunteered to help out and our team was one of them.
I think there were different volunteer stations in different cities around the prefecture (state) of Kyoto (as Kyoto is a prefecture/state as well as a city) and we went and registered there. Then after a short wait we were off to where we were going to help.

A farmer on the outside of one of the local towns had a mudslide go over a road on his property that separated the back of his farm (or another small village - it was hard to understand with the translation difference). So we were all given shovels and gloves, hopped in some vehicles and headed to the farmers land to work. We were working on the side of a rice paddy and had a lot of dirt to clear. There must have been 20 of us working on this one area and it took us a number of hours to shovel all the dirt into the back of small trucks or wheelbarrows and make the road passable again.

It was definitely a good workout, digging and moving the dirt all day, but more importantly it was a good thing to do. We were able to help out the farmer who really needed it. Otherwise, he would have probably spent weeks clearing the mess up, valuable time he could be using doing something else.

(Filling the road/potholes with the dirt that took from the landslide pile)

Back to the land of the rising sun

Well I made it back to Japan, and safely. Although it wasn't without a hiccup. This year to fly over to Japan I flew out of Milwaukee.

My flight went Milwaukee - Chicago - Tokyo - Osaka
When I got to the airport in Milwaukee everything was set on on time and I was good to go. When I got to Chicago though it was a different story. Instead of being on time the flight I had was delayed over 3.5 hours..... Fantastic. Not cool when you have a connection to make. So, I waited. Finally after some time and promise form the United Airlines workers in Chicago that the company employees in Tokyo would help either get me a different flight to Osaka or a hotel room I was ready to go. So we all got on the plane and.....more delay..... Excellent.
The flight was a good flight but I should have enjoyed something nice while I had the chance because things weren't so rosy in Tokyo.
When we got in, they had different lines that you had to go to depending on which kind of connecting flight you missed. If you had an international connection you had two different lines you could go to, or if you had a domestic flight that you missed you had a different line to go to. Since I missed my domestic connecting flight I moseyed into that line. The guy behind the makeshift table they had set up told me that there were no more flights to Osaka that evening and that I would have to wait until the morning to be able to fly. I had kind of guessed this much was going to happen as we got to the baggage claim (where the United people were waiting to help) at 8:30pm. I was a little disappointed but told the guy no problem as I would just hop on the flight in the morning.
But until then I needed somewhere to go. Because I missed my flight United should have paid for my hotel room right? Ha.

The United guy asked me where I was going to stay the night. I saw all the other people in the line being handed red and white vouchers for hotel rooms and said wherever you guys are going to have me stay. He left for a minute and came back. I thought it was going to be to hand me a voucher for the hotel room, instead he handed me some great advice. He told me that because my ticket was booked in two different parts: from Milwaukee to Tokyo and then from Tokyo to Osaka (I think the team did it this way to save a little money) they wouldn't give me a hotel room because their part of the ticket ended in Tokyo. My attempts to explain that if it wasn't for United's mistake I would have made my flight and there wouldn't be a need for us to be talking, fell on deaf ears. He graciously let me know though, that if I needed a place to sleep I could find myself some space out in the arrivals hall and sleep in the airport :) Thanks guy!
But, thats not all. After he told me that they wouldn't get me a hotel room, he went to switch my flight (luckily he didnt tell me I had to buy a whole new airplane ticket). He did however tell me that I would not be able to leave from the same airport I flew into. Instead I would have the privilege of flying out from the other Tokyo airport on the whole other side of Tokyo. How long does it take to get there you ask? A 1.5 hour bus ride..... Super!

I managed to talk the guy into paying for my bus ticket, and dog-tired made it to the other airport (almost slept through my stop). Once I got to the there I checked into the $140 hotel room I found, and got some sleep. The last leg of the trip from the other Tokyo airport to Osaka, and then the car ride from Osaka airport to my place in Kyoto went well, but my goodness what a disaster...... and feat of customer service.
I guess though, I did make it here safely and that's the most important thing.