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.

Hiking to Mt. Tateishi

After visit to Ito campus (a new campus of Kyushu Univ), I went to Keya district at the west coast of Itoshima Peninsula and walked up to the peak of Mt. Tateishi (210 m altitude) from Keya beach, which is popular for swimming, fishing, and surfing. Though it is a small mountain, I enjoyed a beautiful view of the sea, Keya beach, and Himeshima Island.

An old-fashioned local hot spring (public spa)

This public spa, Teraono Onsen, was extremely nice. Though the bath is separated into men's and lady's space only by a thin wooden partition, equipped with no soap, shampoo, or shower, this is well maintained by local people in Oguni Town, Kumamoto Prefecture and made me relaxed with a slight sulpher (perhaps H2S) smell, at a minimum fee (only 100 JPY).

A camping site

Last weekend I stayed at a camping site in the Kuju highland, Oita Prefecture. The weather was fine, showing beautiful blue sky in the day time, and wonderful starlit sky in the night. As I do not have a tent, I rented a small cottage that fit two persons at maximum. The small cottage is like a doghouse, but OK for staying in a sleeping bag.
In the next morning, the landscape around the camping site was quite refreshing, especially the beautiful shape of Mt. Waita-san.

Vietnamese Dinner

Ms. Tam, a Vietnamese PhD student who will receive the degree tomorrow and leave here to go back to Vietnam next Monday, served Vietnamese Dish for us. All the dishes are very nice. We may miss her and her cooking.

An easy hiking with my daughter

Yesterday, we visited Mt. Tachibana-yama near Fukuoka City. It was perfectly sunny, but it was bit pitty that my favorite bakery near the mountain had been closed down.


One the way to the peak, we found a pomegranate tree with many red fruits, which looked almost matured.