here, there, everywhere

All packed up and waiting in our empty, scrubbed clean, tiny little room for the landlords to come and pick up the keys. Home for the last few weeks has been a shared, seven-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Kichijoji, where fortunately we lucked out in terms of cool, chill roommates and relatively comprehensible waste management laws. As much as I've liked Kichijoji, though, I'm mostly just excited to get to Numazu in the Izu Peninsula, where - after a week of staying in a hotel while the other teachers clear out of the apartment - we can finally unpack our suitcases, maybe stick a photo or two up on the walls, and settle down for a full year, which will be the longest I've been settled anywhere in the two-plus years I've been traveling. Anyway, updates from Numazu to follow - for now, keep your fingers crossed for us that the landlord thinks the room is as clean as we do and gives us back all our security deposit money. 

... is however, infinitely cheaper than the shinkanesen and moderately more comfortable than the night buses I took in and out of Hanoi. At any rate, Lenora, Iain and I all piled into the cheapest night bus (cheapest night bus that could be booked in English, at any rate) leaving Tokyo on Friday night, and rolled into Kyoto too early for our hostel to check us in. So, with about five hours of sleep under our belts, we went exploring instead, starting with a bus to Kinkakuji Temple (above), on which we all promptly fell asleep. Fortunately, the stops were called out loudly and in English, so we all woke up on time.

We also visited the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, which, strangely, is not mentioned in Lonely Planet, but which is worth visiting nonetheless, particularly if you - like me and Iain - needed to wash the unapologetically revisionist tone of Tokyo's war exhibit at Yasakuni Shrine out of your mouth. (Fun Fact: did you know that the Japanese inspired Ho Chi Minh to rebel against the French? True story!) At any rate, the Kyoto museum adopts a far more balanced and reflective tone, examining the devastating effects of Japanese militarism on lives of both Japanese and foreign civilians. The one-room basement exhibit is mostly photos - save for a re-created World War Two era Japanese house, and a startlingly heavy replica of a soldier's backpack, which visitors are invited to pick up - and the explanations are a bit sparse, though the English pamphlet fills some blanks and the displays speak for themselves. The second half of the basement turns the focus to worldwide struggles for peace, while the smaller - and less well-signed - upstairs exhibit chronicles mostly Japanese efforts to change the world for the better. Outside, roses transplanted from the Anne Frank house - a donation from her father to the city of Kyoto - drive home the museum's overarching plea for world peace. For any Lonely Planet toting tourists, the museum is midway between Kinkakuji and Ryogen-in Temple, and directions are marked with English signs; if you don't choke up at least a little while watching the (untranslated) animated introductory video depicting a young soldier's life, then there might be something wrong with you. 

I am a lazy blogger, but at least this week I have an excuse (by which I mean a good excuse, for once, I swear) : the lovely Lenora is visiting us here in Tokyo for two weeks! So, in between our intensive course work and somewhat restricted budget, we made an excursion to Shimokitazawa, which has fast become my favorite neighborhood in Tokyo.

Just two photos of the Isle of Harris for now because we're all packed up and just waiting to leave for the train station soon, to begin our 2.5-day-long circus of trains, planes and subways to get ourselves and our meticulously weighed luggage from Aberdeenshire to Tokyo. The beaches in Harris were some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen, and there'll be lots more photos on my other website in a few days, hopefully.

Iain's father's side of the family is from the island of Lewis, so we spent our first day being shown around the island by his second cousin once removed, who graciously picked us up and drove us around for several hours. We covered all the major roads on the island and saw a lot of the big sights, like the standing stones (above) and beaches at the northernmost tip of the island, all of which were beautiful, even in the freezing February cold.

The best part of the tour, though, was being shown all the places of historical relevance to Iain's family. As the MacLeods once controlled the island, you can't throw a stone without hitting a MacLeod, a truck with their name painted on it, a monument to a bunch of them who stole bunch of sheep back in the day, and of course, graves with their names on it, including Roderick, above, who was an ancestor of Iain's. 

Posting from our bed and breakfast in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis; yesterday, Iain and I piled into the car and drove west. Being from the States, it still seems strange to me that you should be able to drive across the entire country in four hours, but that's exactly what we did, past Inverness, through some truly otherworldly snow, all the way to the coastal town of Ullapool: