Kumamoto

The flight to Kumamoto just isn't going to be easy.  From Vancouver we get on a 10 hour flight to Nariata airport in Tokyo, change airports (Haneda in Tokyo handles much of the domestic traffic) and then local flight for about an hour and half to Kumamoto.  We left Vancouver at around noon and arrived in Kumamoto at 9:30pm - 5:30 am in Vancouver local time.  With the time change it's quite challenging to sleep in the next morning - I was up by 7am.  Thankfully Suizenji-koen Garden is open really early and I could walk there without needing directions.

Suizenji-koen Garden
On my previous trips to Japan, I brought a hip bag, a camera and two lenses - my favorite (the 105mm macro) and my most versitle (28-70mm f2.8 AFS).  The night before I was trying to figure out what to bring and decided to not use the hip bag - bring a full sized backpack instead - this was a car trip after all.  My backpack is safer (much more padding), and it gave me the space to bring my monster lens - a 80-200 f2.8 AFS).  This morning in Suizenji-koen, I took about three pictures before I switched to the big lens, and boy was I glad I brought it.

There was also the usual difficult to get, want to have's.  The big department stores had Studio Ghibli displays with stuffed animals (the big totoro would be about a thousand dollars Canadian) and the electronics stores had pretty much given up CRT's as if they cause cancer (perhaps Japan knows something we don't).

After a day of shopping Eric took us on a trolley ride out to a temple complex in the North Eastern part of town.  I looked it up in my guide books and this area is just off the map but it is called "Honmyoji" in English.  The complex has a nightly lantern festival and associated cultural events on the weekends in the month of March.  The first thing we got roped into (they were presavive beckoners, but we weren't complaining) was a traditional tea ceremony.  After we disposed of our 300 yen, we were seated to watch the woman undertake the traditional steps.

First cold fresh water is put in the stove heated pot on her left.  Once the water is boiled, the hot water is put into a tea bowl.  Green tea is added and then the mixture is whisked.  Finally, after a bowl cleaning, it was served.  Then bowls came out for the rest of us and we enjoyed.