Visiting Kyoto (pitty) and Osaka (great!)

With Val, we visited Kyoto, the most famous historic city in Japan with much temples and shrines. Moreover, this season is the best for Kyoto, because of beautiful Japanese maple leaves turning in red in many streets and hills. However, in turn, this season may be worst in a sense of being congested by tourists like us. We made a 40 min line of waiting a cloakroom in Kyoto station. We had a much traffic congestions making our bus tour behind time, resulting in a very short stay in each temple/shrine. And it was raining....
Next day, on Monday (a national holiday), we got a beautiful sunny day and visited Osaka castle. It was very nice with nice view of yellow ginkgo tree leaves and magnificent castle. In addition, we came across a outdoor concert of Japanese taiko drums played by two high school teams. Their plays were quite nice and vibration of taiko sound stroke us pleasantly.
When we considered social events after the 12th ISDCI congress (in Fukuoka), Osaka and Kyoto may be a candidate for some after-conference tour, though it'll be in hot and humid summer.


The Japanese garden in Hei-An Jingu


Ginkgo trees in Osaka Castle Park


Osaka Castle Museum


Taiko Drum by a high school players in Osaka Castle Park

Lab Excursion to Nagasaki

As a lab excursion, we visited Nagasaki Biopark (a zoo) and Iou-jima (a resort island) in Kyushu. It was 22 years ago when I visited Biopark with my wife as a honeymoon. Most of the animals there were fun to see. The funniest one was a kangaroo looking like being hangover.
Iou-jima was also fine with nice hotel and beautiful view of sea and other natures.