Niigata City, capital of Niigata Prefecture, isn’t really a travel destination for foreign tourists at all, but we ended up staying there for five nights because of a conference Yan was attending. Unsurprisingly, there was a huge contrast with Kyoto in terms of Romanized signage, though there were two English-language maps at the tourist information center (one, of restaurants, was somewhat out of date).

Niigata is a port city on a plain, surrounded by rice paddies. This photo is of the countryside on the way back from Niigata to Tokyo; the mountains were barely visible from Niigata itself. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

When researching this trip, it seemed that all the guidebooks basically assumed one would just use the city as a jumping-off point to ferries to Sado-ga-Shima, the island just off the coast. So I did a lot of scrounging online for information about things to do, some of which came in handy. I thought I’d put that info here for others to reference.

The bus system worked pretty similarly to the one in Kyoto (pay at front when exiting), so that made it a bit easier, but we ended up mostly walking (which was pretty doable). There were no paper maps of the bus system available at the tourist office, but the main terminal, on the north end of the train station, has a large mural that depicts the city but routes (unfortunately, we didn’t discover this until the day before we left).

View of Niigata north from the convention center, across the Shinano River to the Sea of Japan. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

The place where our lack of ability to read Kanji was most of an issue was in restaurants. It’s much harder to be more adventurous about that sort of thing when one is a vegetarian. So we didn’t eat as well as we did in Kyoto. …I should probably rephrase that to say we did have some good food (some really excellent tofu one night, and some damn good sushi), but the language barrier created challenges.

The city is definitely grittier than Kyoto. It didn’t help that it rained off and on most of the time we were there- it sort of added to the industrial landscape. We stayed in an inexpensive business hotel, Dormy Inn, which was close to the train station and a bit over a kilometer from Yan’s meeting site. It was quite nice for the price- had an en-suite bathroom (it was also larger than the Kyoto hostel!) and two onsen on the premises (which we didn’t avail ourselves of).

View from our hotel to the convention center. The residential neighborhood was nice to walk through on the way to the meeting. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

There are a few main areas of tourist interest in the city. Downtown/Bandai (between the train station and the Shinano River) contains a lot of restaurants, shopping, bars, and strip clubs. Across the Shinano River to the north is the more traditional nightlife district (possibly more upscale bars?) and what seemed to be a newer downtown area. This more northerly district historically had  lots of canals; it was a port area as well as the red-light district. Today, the canals have been filled in and are now streets. It’s fairly easy to walk between and around these areas. South of the station (which we didn’t get to ) is the main pro soccer stadium and a large lagoon with parks and gardens. Much of the rest of the city is residential and industrial areas.

Bandai District from the convention center. Niigata Station is behind the taller buildings. You can sort of see the lagoon and stadium in the upper right. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

I’ll post later about two areas in the city where I took walks: along the Shinano River to Hakusan Park, and to Nishikaigan Park along the coast.

I ended up doing three day trips out of the city using my rail pass (Tokyo’s Ueno Park, Echigo-Yuzawa, and Fukushimagata Wetlands); I could probably have spent another day just wandering the city instead, but these were things I was pretty excited about seeing (more in later posts).

Things I ended up not seeing that seemed like they might be neat:

• Northern Culture Museum (via bus): an old family estate and teahouse in a rice-growing area.
• Sakata & Murikami (via train): small towns with historic areas that were recommended to me as scenic.
• Yahiko (via train): a forested mountain and shrine southwest of the city.
• Toyanogata Lagoon (via bus): Big Swan Stadium is on this lagoon; there are also parks and apparently excellent birding in winter.
• Sado Island, of course.
• There’s also a tourist but that takes a route through scenic parts of the city, which would have been useful for orientation, but I didn’t take:

Inu-yasha tourist bus!

Noe likes hanging out behind the bikes on the porch.

“Just explorin’ here.”

This means that stray rabbit fur floats around and gets embedded in the lube on the chains, so we (really, Yan) have to do a lot of cleaning.

Noe’s only contribution to that is trying to eat the grease-stained newspaper. Sometimes, she can be pretty dumb.

Because we were mainly in urban areas in Japan, we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife. Really, the deer in Nara were the only megafauna we saw; we were hiking in areas with wild monkeys a few times, but only saw signs warning of their apparent evil.

Seriously, do not mess with the monkeys! Sign from Fushimi Inari.

Of course, there were feral cats a few times, and the nutria in the Shimogamo River. But we didn’t see anything really cool like tanuki.

I did a fair amount of birding, though it was mostly opportunistic in the sense of carrying my binoculars around with me.

Birding at Kiyomizu-dera. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

The season and areas we were in weren’t really conducive to seeing a wide variety of birds, but I did see 45 different species (25 lifers).

Black-tailed Gull, Ueno Park.

The only raptor we saw was the Black Kite; there were a lot of these in Kyoto. We’d occasionally hear them calling from our hotel room window, and look out to see them riding thermals over the city.

Black Kite on right; Rock Pigeons on left.

We ended up seeing some neat invertebrates too. A wet day in Kyoto showed us a land planarian that was several inches long.

Pretty sure this is Bipalium kewense. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

I’m not very good at ID’ing insects, but we saw a lot of flying critters in riparian areas (including the giant hornet!). I have no idea what this one is (thankfully, it was not flying):

Seen near a stream in Higashiyama. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

And there were some insects in scenic places, like this caterpillar found on a jacket in the forest at Fushimi Inari:

Kind of a cute little guy. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

If we visit again, it would be nice to get into some less urbanized areas to see more wildlife. Maybe a Hokkaido trip in the future…

This is what a very relaxed bunny looks like:

Dreaming of a magical garden of alfalfa and parsley…

After visiting the Arashiyama bamboo grove, we headed north on a scenic walk, visiting two temples along the way: Jojakko-ji (on a hill with an expansive view of the city) and Gion-in (a tiny temple really only known for its moss garden), and a cemetery (Adashino Nenbutsu-ji).

Entrance to Jojakko-ji. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

Jojakko-j was very leafy and cool, which was ice because it was a pretty warm day. It had some neat moss-covered stairs, wooden buildings, and a small pagoda near the top of the property.

Jojakko-ji’s pagoda. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

One thing Arashiyama is famous for is its moss gardens. We didn’t visit the most famous (Koke-dera) because you have to apply several days in advance via postcard to get in. But Jojakko-ji and Gion-in had enough moss to satisfy me.

Mossy garden at Jojakko-ji.

This was a good place to sit and be peaceful for a bit.

The grounds of Jojakko-ji are actually quite steep, so there were a lot of mossy stairs.

Yan was perhaps less impressed by the moss gardens, in part because entrance fees can add up if you’re going to multiple little temples in a row.

Gateway at Gion-in.

While at Jojakko-ji, the moss was sort of just there being soft and verdant, at Gion-in the moss was actually landscaped! Different varieties were used to create mossy features under the maple canopy. How cool is that?

“River” feature in the garden.

There were little planters with different species labeled:

Attention to bryophytes.

It was also interesting to see how the light quality under the maples varied from the quality in the surrounding bamboo forest.

The temple itself is small- you can see it in the background here.

The light under the bamboo was quite different:

Bamboo in the background, maples in front.

At one point, we saw a cat sleeping on the moss. Kawaii!

So cute, so fuzzy.

The last place we visited on our walk was a graveyard: Adashino Nenbutsu-ji. As the name indicates, it’s a Buddhist site. It’s known for a collection of small stone Buddha statues-grave markers-all packed together in rows.

The statues all face a central stupa. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

The markers were apparently collected from old graves around the area about a century ago and brought to this one site to consecrate them. It’s still an active graveyard, so there were parts of the property with modern graves as well.

More grave markers. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

Thus ended our trip to Arashiyama. Of course, we had to walk back to the train station- a few miles away.

Though we didn’t take many photos of street scenes, much of the area was pretty. A lot of traditional older homes, and of course shops and restaurants along the way. It was quite a nice walk, and a nice way to end our stay in Kyoto.

On our last full day in Kyoto, we visited the Arashiyama area, which is right up against the hills on the west side of the city. It’s a very scenic area, with many historic sights and temples. We certainly didn’t visit everything- or even a majority of the interesting sights.

After taking the train to the Arashiyama station, we ate some breakfast pastries that we’d brought with us from the shop at Kyoto Station. Then we headed down to the Katsura River, and the famous Togetsukyō Bridge.

The famous Togetsukyo. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

It’s a popular area for weddings, and we actually saw the bridge in car commercials featuring Arashiyama sights when we had a TV in our Niigata hotel room…but more on that later. The bridge is near the confluence of the Hozu & Ōi Rivers, which are both quite scenic as they cut through the hills. We walked along the river to Kameyama Park, and stopped for a bit to listen to a woman practicing the flute near the riverside.

The Hozu River. The Sagano Romantic Train runs through the gorge.

At the top of Kameyama Park, there’s an overlook with nice views of the Hozu; one can take boat trips up the river or travel on the Sagano Romantic Train. We did neither, but amused ourselves by speculating whether we’d regret not optimizing the amount of romance on our vacation.

At the top of the hill, we saw our first Japanese giant hornet! And gave it a wide berth.

They can get up to nearly 2″ long! (Photo: cracked.com)

One of the main sights in Arashiyama is the famous old bamboo grove.

Tall, tall bamboo. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

Really beautiful, but cars are apparently allowed to drive on the path through it. So taxis would occasionally come through, stop at the end and disgorge passengers, and then the drivers would take a picture of the passengers. Some of the taxis had schoolkids, so it was a bit of a cop-out: taking a taxi to the required field-trip sights instead of walking. I guess this gives kids more time to shop for ice cream and Hello Kitty merchandise before catching the train back to town.

We wondered how this painter felt about the crowd of kids taking photos as he was trying to paint. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

Our time in Arashiyama was just beginning. Next time: landscaping with moss!

Okay, so Noe actually doesn’t “vacation,” as such. But she’s been to quit a few places when I traveled, mostly in her younger years.

When I lived on Oahu, she came with me to Kauai twice for family visits. The first time, she stayed with me in my parents’ office-the only room that the cats wouldn’t meow constantly at the door of when they were being kept out (though there was some pug-snuffling at the door by the dog):

“Vacation sure seems like jail. I’m sure your mom wouldn’t mind if I chewed on her files.”

The second time, we got to stay in a guest room, where the cats and dogs weren’t allowed. Here, Mom was very sweet and bought a baby gate to install on the door, so it could stay open and give her a breeze.

While a nice gesture, that turned out to be a mistake. It took Noe abut 10 minutes to decide that the gate was the most interesting part of the room, and then a minute after that to realize that only one well-positioned nip would allow her to make a hole in the plastic mesh. That baby gate had about 20 minutes of usefulness.

Luckily, Mom was a good sport about the whole thing. Though the sarcastic comments about well-trained pets weren’t really appreciated.

Seen in Nara:

“Hale Paniolo: American Life Style Shop.” (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

I wouldn’t really consider a specifically Hawaiian community of cowboys to be representative of “American lifestyle.” But maybe that’s just me 🙂

The Fushimi Inari Shrine is located in Inari, a suburb of Kyoto. It’s mainly known for two things: orange torii gates and foxes (kitsune). The shrine complex covers several acres of wooded hills, with lots of paths- and stairs- through the forest. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of shrines and little memorials throughout the area.

Main shrine building. The walk uphill begins near here. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

We spent most of the day at this complex. The torii stretch out over many miles of pathways and trails. All of this is set in the hilly forest so it’s all very idyllic in setting. The multitude of shrines makes it more so. It’s incredible. The site was crowded but  that didn’t really detract from anything, plus we ended up taking a side detour that had few people on it (so few we were a bit concerned about getting lost in the hills). In places the torii are packed so closely together in groups of tens to hundreds that passing through them is like passing through a tunnel. It’s an amazing effect.

Walking in the torii tunnel. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

The shrines along the way had many levels of detail and sophistication. Some were small things with basically just stones erected in an appropriate way. These often had two cute little 3″ or so clay white foxes on them (yes, we ended up buying a pair of these, but that was later in Tokyo). The main ones were quite large, with elaborate ropes, red aprons for the foxes, brightly colored platforms and posts, etc. Foxes are traditional guardians of granaries, so this started as an agriculture shrine.

Collection of shrines near a stream.

In various places, the trail was lined with shops- either tea stands, ramen spots, or ice cream stands. Most of these offered a place to sit and relax and contemplate the forest (and incidentally catch your breath). Other than these spots, there were very few places to sit. This sort of mix of commercial and religious aspects was pretty much everywhere- e.g., the Hello Kitty paraphernalia that was Kinkaku-ji and and Fushimi Inari themed. Also the wide variety of little charms that you could pick up everywhere.

Cub scouts and others taking a rest break. You can see Kyoto in the background. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

There are main paths at this complex, but also trails that are basically hiking paths that go off into the forest. We decided to take one of these on the assumption that it would eventually loop us back to the main path. (It did.) So that gave us a great chance to get into the woods, and be away from people. It was really quiet out there. The trail ran downstream along one creek and then upstream another in the next mini-valley over. We had the trail pretty much to ourselves.

A less crowded area on the trail. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

At two stops on the trail, there were a dense clusters of shrines. The shrines were sort of wedged into the hillside on whatever flat part of the streamside there was. Very nice to be able to hang out at such a place for a while and prowl around all the shrines without getting in anyone’s way.

You could buy little torii like these for a few hundred yen at the shops along the way, but the bigger gates cost thousands. Note the bonnets and aprons on the foxes.

At the end of the walk, we had some lunch in the ubiquitous commercial area at the entrance to the shrine, along with some fox-shaped cinnamon cookies. Yum.

Fox guardian holding the key to the granary. (Photo: Y. Fernandez)

This is timely, since Florida’s first cyclone threat of 2012 is churning toward us in the Caribbean.

Want to see a map of every hurricane tracked since 1851? This is a really cool visualization of this data, though it may take a minute to orient yourself to the map projection:

Click to enlarge. Image copyright IDVsolutions .

Really, this should be called a cyclone map, because it includes all cyclonic storms: both tropical storms and hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones, depending on linguistic preferences. But it’s an American map, so the creator apparently chose to go with “hurricane.” A blog post in which the creator talks about making the map is here.

The brightness intensity of the Atlantic & E. Pacific storms seems enhanced compared to that of the W. Pacific and Indian Ocean storms. I suspect this is because tracking of these storms by NOAA (which is where the dataset comes from) started rather late. It’s a bit unfortunate, because one of the things people will do is compare the prevalence of cyclones in various regions, and the Philippine Sea, S. China Sea, and W. Pacific are very active regions for cyclones. So the overall effect is to give an unbalanced view of the activity in various regions. (Admittedly, I haven’t looked at the data myself, so my concern might be unfounded here.)

Still, a very interesting visualization!