Blogs from Asia - page 14807

Last night a dreamt I woke in the middle of the nightand went to the garden. the garden was dark and I could only make out grey shapes of plants and some thingsmoving amongst them. Slowly I began to notice tigers asleep in the garden....many tigers asleep ad some with cubs. and then there were lions too. I found my mother asleep mongst them all as I stepped over their fury bodies to cross the garden. Either they were giant lions and tigers or I had shrunk to the size of a fiveyear old child. as their bodies weredifficult to traverse. I watched their big chests rise and fall as my feet searched a small space between groin and belly to step. Perhaps I was sleep walking in my dream and if I was I was ... read more

Have been checking out the surrounding area, the weather has been a lot nicer and everything is so green and pretty when the sun is out! In my area of Shizuoka it is mainly residential, with lots of green tea hedges on the surrounding mountains and vegie gardens that you see men and women tending. It is a quiet area, mostly families and older people so we feel quite safe walking home from tuition at night, and there are often people out walking until 10 ish at night, especially when the weather is nicer. Its quite nice to pass people in the street and wish them 'kombanwa' (good evening).... read more

We left Mumbai for the culture rich state of Rajasthan and in the past week we've visited Jaipur, Jaisalmer, are now in Jodhpur (yes where the name of the riding trousers came from), and will be heading to Udaipur tomorrow afternoon. Jaipur, the state capital, borders the eastern reaches of the Great Thar Desert which stretches far westward into Pakistan. The desert consists of tiny tribal villages dotted about and every hundred miles or so are fortified cities which all have one aspect in common -a dramatic sandcastle-like fort perched atop a rocky hill jutting out of the barren flat landscape. Within these forts are meandering cobblestone streets, centuries old mansions called havelis with intricate stone lattice carvings, and tiny ancient houses. There is a timeless feel walking within these forts even despite the tourist ... read more

By Shinkansen - Japanese Bullet train - we took the Nizomo Superfast Express train... Having been on probably the slowest trains in the world in India, which make lots of stops in the night - to travelling at outrageous speed through Japan came as something of a shock! ... read more

This morning I slept in until 6:30am. It felt good. Surprisingly I didn't hear Dad snoring at all last night. I hope the same will be true tonight. We got moving around 8:30am or so to go to Shitennoji - the oldest Buddhist temple. We had to navigate through the subway (changing lines and everything) and we didn't get lost once! I feel like a master of the metro system :) The temple was tucked away off the main street and it took us a few wrong places to get there. One was into a Japanese cemetary - very serene and beautiful. The temple was okay -- exciting because it was the first temple I saw, but not too impressive. Most of it looked restored, except for a portion in the back that looked incredibly old. ... read more