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Valley of Fire
After we got out of the canyon, we had a couple days in Las Vegas, so David and I went for a side trip to the Valley of Fire State Park about an hour away. My brother Adam brought me there a few years ago, and we had a good time climbing around. It took…
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Grand Canyon
Aย few weeks ago I went on a backpacking trip with some friends in the Grand Canyon. It was a great time. My friend Dave leads these trips for the Sierra club, but this one was just four friends going. He did a great job.
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Hoover Dam
We hit Hoover Dam on the way to the canyon. I didn’t notice before how Art Deco it was.
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NRT to BUF in time for Christmas
I’ve made it home. Things were a bit confusing in Dulles. A number of people got bumped off my flight to Buffalo. There was too much luggage, so the plane was going to be over-weight. The policy is that they’ll take the luggage, and leave the people stranded in the airport. I almost volunteered to…
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Sesshin
I’m back in Tokyo after three days at the Tekishinjuku International Zendo. I stayed in their guesthouse a little way down the road, and lived a short three-day stint as a monk would. I had a little bit of trouble finding my way back to the guesthouse from the temple in pitch blackness the first…
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Nara and Koyasan
Over the past few days I’ve been to Nara and Koyasan and back to Kyoto. I’m leaving Kyoto today to go to the Zendo that I’ve mentioned before. There have been a couple of delays in getting there, but I’m looking forward to it. It looks like somebody is going to owe me ten bucks.…
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In Nara
Today I took the train from Kyoto (the capital for a thousand years up until about 1868), to Nara, which was the capital for a while before that. I’ll be checking out some very old temples here tomorrow and then heading to Koyasan the next morning to stay at Shingon Buddhist temples there for two…
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Fun Stuff
In addition to being a reasonably upstanding tourist, I have been known to fall in with a crowd of international misfits and ne’er-do-wells usually referred by their vulgar name, “backpackers.” While sometimes thought of as an Australian phenomenon, they do in fact originate from points around the globe, including the US of A. In fact,…
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More Sightseeing in Kyoto
Over the last few days, I’ve been staying at a hostel in Kyoto called K’s House. It might be the best one that I’ve ever stayed at. It’s nearly brand new, has clean, comfortable rooms, great facilities, a good kitchen, and really terrific common areas. It’s big enough that there are always people to hang…
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Kyoto: Part VII
I’ve been in Kyoto for a couple of days again. I feel like this is a great place to be. Part of it is that I’ve been staying at a good place. I haven’t been a very good tourist over the past few days. Saturday afternoon I met with Steffen from Germany who is studying…