Well, I've made up my mind. I'm done with any outdoor stuff until the weather gets cooler. It may be hotter back in Austin, but at least there's plenty of air conditioning there, and one doesn't have to walk miles in the outdoor heat to get around. I've written to several people already that the killer about the humidity here is that even sweat won't evaporate. You just sweat more. I was walking around the Gion district in Kyoto (featured in "Memoires of a Geisha"), and it got to be a battle between wanting to step into a shop just to enjoy the air conditioning and being really embarrassed that I looked like I'd had a bucket of water thrown onto my chest and my back. That's when I decided that the outdoor stuff is just going to have to wait. I think I'm going to doing a lot of reading in the next several weeks!
What's happened in the last week? Not much. Thursday here was a holiday, so I went on another photo walk right around the hotel. I got some pictures of a couple interesting buildings in the area and the mob scene that you encounter when crossing the street at a busy intersection. Let me just say that New York just doesn't compare to this!
Saturday I was very lazy and ended up reading most of the day and going to bed early.
Sunday was the Kyoto trip to check out one of the park areas. It was a 35 minute train ride on the Limited Express train. Now, don't confuse that with the Express train, which has a few ***more*** stops. One of the other lines even has a Special Limited Express train to Kobe, which is the next step up in stop reduction. The Local train to Kyoto has probably three times as many stops as the Limited Express, so I don't know how long it would take. Maybe 1 1/2 hours. Anyway, Kyoto was fun, if very hot. There are tons of shrines and temples there. I got some cool pictures, and even got to see a few Geisha. The poor things. They were going down these stone steps in 4" tall, short-lengthed (the soles are angled sharply back from the toe), narrow shoes with soles of wood. It looked pretty treacherous to me! I wanted to get some photos, but felt bad for the women because of everyone staring and shooting photos already. This is all while they're trying to get down the steps. Hell, I don't know...on the other hand, maybe they do it as much for the attention as anything else? I finally tried some long shots with the camera on telephoto, but they didn't turn out. So, no Geisha.
That's it for the time being. Wish me luck, that I don't melt in the heat and humidity!