In mid-August we travelled to Japan for meetings, spending one week in the Himeji/Takasago area and another week in Kyoto, the ancient imperial capital.

Here we are at Himeji Castle, the largest and one of the oldest traditional castles in Japan, and the site of the filming of some scenes from the movie Shogun.

At Takasago we posed with a steam turbine rotor in the ‘retired machinery garden”.We visited Tenryu-ji Temple, the head temple of the Tenryū branch of Rinzai Zen Buddhism in the foothills of the mountains surrounding Kyoto.  It was established in 1339 and is known for views of the surrounding mountains from its gardens.  ……………. and had traditional vegetarian temple food seated on the tatami.  We participated in a traditional “Maiko” dinner with traditional entertainment.  We visited Kinkaku-ji temple, a Zen Buddhist temple dating from 1397.  The garden complex is an excellent example of Muromachi Period garden  design, considered to be a classical age of Japanese garden design.  The temple itself sits in the middle of a pond and is known as the “Golden Pavilion”.At Kinkaku-ji they also had weird ice cream flavors.  John had black sesame ice cream and Paula had green tea ice cream.We celebrated Paula’s XXth birthday at a restaurant on Kyoto’s Kamogawa River with 130 of our closest friends from all over the World.  And Paula was a leading participant in our annual encounter with Karaoke.  Here with the girls from Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.And here with the guys from Ireland, Spain, Egypt, Japan, Singapore, England, India and ???