Hikone

We had planned to travel this weekend, but with H1N1 flu in our region (and too much work to do!), we decided to stay closer to home. To make ourselves feel better, we planned a fun day trip and went to see the castle at Hikone. This is a small city on the other side of Lake Biwa (Japan's largest lake, just on the other side of the mountains from Kyoto) that has a Tokugawa castle on a hill overlooking the lake. The main tower (early 17th century) still stands guard over the town, and part of the city has been reconstructed in the style of a castle town of the era. There's also a fine strolling garden between the inner and outer moats.

Little J's favorite part of the day, however, was the ride there and back. We wanted to avoid the flu by traveling in a less crowded vehicle (that's the excuse we used, at least), so we took the Shinkansen--the bullet train. The Shinkansen is such a nice ride, and J seemed to enjoy both the trip and sitting on the platform and watching the Shinkansen. He looked utterly shocked the first time a Nozomi rocketed by and then started looking around when he heard trains in the distance after that. S and I had "Eki-ben" for lunch on the train (bento boxes (sushi or veggie lunch boxes with rice) specially made for train travel) and J had his lunch in his little Shinkansen bento box. The only problem is that the trip via Shinkansen to this city on the other side of a large lake in an entirely different prefecture only took 22 minutes. It wasn't long enough! Oh well, we're going to Tokyo next month and will ride the Shinkansen again then.

There's not too much flu yet in Kyoto (though it's coming), but my lecture in Kobe this week was postponed again due to the spread there. We've decided to go to Seoul next month for the conference, so we're finishing up our papers this weekend. Back to work! J would rather count blades of grass in a nice garden than hang around the apartment watching his people click away at their laptops.

By the way, a note about Kyoto Station. We recently stopped at the Cafe du Monde at the station to enjoy coffee and beignets. For those of you familiar with this famous establishment from New Orleans (or its former branch in Osaka), you know that beignets are delightful little donut-y things with powdered sugar. Sure enough, right there on the sign it says "Cafe and Beignets." Note the ."..AND Beignets" part. So, they should have beignets, right? The only food item on the menu is hot dogs. Hot dogs! Oh well, with a bakery at every train and subway station, including a very fine German bakery at our own depato down the street, and coffee on every street corner, we have no shortage of tasty snacks.